EVERYDAY KIND OF LOVE: A Poetry Party to Save Split This Rock
EVERYDAY KIND OF LOVE: A Poetry Party to Save Split This Rock took place in Washington, DC on December 11, 2025
At the heart of Split This Rock’s work has always been an insistence that poetry for liberation does not happen in isolation, but in community. While most of our work in recent years has facilitated virtual connection, we were excited to host an in-person poetry gathering for our local community— Everyday Kind of Love: A Poetry Party to Save Split This Rock featuring Clint Smith! The evening was a joyful celebration with a live DJ, raffle prizes, tarot readings, special guest readers, and more as we fundraised to bridge a funding gap at Split This Rock. Together, we were able to raise almost $2,000 in a single evening!
From our biennial poetry festival and Sunday Kind of Love, the DC Youth Slam Team and Louder Than A Bomb Youth Poetry Slam and Festival, to Poem of the Week, virtual writing workshops, the Youth Activist Poetry Anthology, and more, Split This Rock has been grateful to contribute to a poetic infrastructure that keeps justice and liberation at the forefront. Not only was this event an opportunity to provide funds for Split This Rock’s survival, but it was also a moment to celebrate poetry of provocation and witness and the numerous ways it spreads an enduring love in us all.
About the Featured Poet
Clint Smith is the author of the narrative nonfiction book How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning With the History of Slavery Across America, which was a #1 New York Times bestseller, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction, the Hillman Prize for Book Journalism, the Stowe Prize, and selected by The New York Times as one of the 10 best books of 2021. He is also the author of The New York Times bestselling poetry collection Above Ground and the award-winning poetry collection Counting Descent. His writing has been published in The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, Poetry Magazine, The Paris Review, and elsewhere. Smith received his BA in English from Davidson College and a PhD in Education from Harvard University. He is a staff writer at The Atlantic.
About Split This Rock’s Funding Crisis
In August 2025, Split This Rock announced an unprecedented funding gap of $68,750 and the difficult decision to temporarily suspend all programming and publications to focus on emergency fundraising to keep the organization afloat. Since then, we have made strides to close the funding gap with an outpouring of support from the community. We are overwhelmed with gratitude for all of the donations and offers of support we have received over the past two months! We have relaunched fee-for-service programmatic offerings to support our fundraising efforts, as well. If you are interested in joining us for virtual poetry workshops in the new year, please find more information at our website.
Our December fundraising event was a celebration of how far we've come and a rallying call to sustain Split This Rock's urgent work into the future. All ticket sales supported Split This Rock's ongoing fundraising efforts. Thank you for your investment in our work of materially supporting poets who are often underrepresented, excluded, and erased from the literary landscape.
Event Recap
To Our Split This Rock Community,
Every day I have this kind of love.
That was the first line from our community poem crafted last week at our DC event Everyday Kind of Love: A Poetry Party to Save Split This Rock and, let me tell you, the love was surely felt. We had long-time Split This Rock family show up, while we also had new members to our community come into the space by chance and leave wanting more of the warmth only this organization can offer.
The space at Busboys and Poets 450K was filled with activities meant to bring folks together: guests created a community poem, customized vintage Split This Rock shirts, wrote haikus for change, received tarot readings, and bought raffle tickets, books, posters, and broadsides to help move us closer to our fundraising goal. The space was rounded out by DJ Slammer, who generously joined us for the evening, along with conversations between new and old friends alike.
During the open mic, we felt poems of parenthood, of grief, of loss, of love, of anger, of a togetherness we all longed for and were feeling in that moment. It was only fitting that Clint Smith, our feature for the evening, spoke on the importance of remembering and storytelling as well as understanding the responsibility of a wordsmith. It was moving to hear, not only Clint, but also so many folks in the room get on the mic and share the role Split This Rock has played in their writing journeys and their journeys toward self-discovery.
On behalf of Split This Rock, I would like to thank each person who showed up, shared their words, purchased merchandise, donated financially, and committed to remaining a support for this community.
Thank you to Busboys and Poets for hosting us, to DJ Slammer for contributing the musical energy, and to Billy Sanders for providing ASL interpretation. I would also like to thank those who could not be there in person, but still shared the event, purchased a ticket, donated financially, offered to support as they could, or simply showed love to this incredible organization that has never wavered in their mission.
The work is not done and the organization continues toward reaching our fundraising goals to be able to serve in the way Split This Rock has done for so many years.
Everyday Kind of Love was a testament to the power of community and we hope you will continue with us as we engage in more ways to bring us all together.
Sincerely,
Tatiana Figueroa Ramirez
Split This Rock Board of Directors
EVERYDAY KIND OF LOVE COMMUNITY POEM
Composed December 11, 2025, at Busboys and Poets 450K in Washington, DC
Every day I have this kind of love
built with muscle
bathed in stained-glass light
kissed abundantly with joy
I wish this could last forever, but we know
there are places that require our attention
tender spots that carry heavy memories
massage the spots that hurt most
light sneaks in through the unexpected crevice
—and there, I see you for the very first time
baby soft, gentle, and ready to give
like no one has ever taken from you before
this flame we tender warmth forever more
like weather or a fever dream
we tempest, we rage
together, and it feels good
tomorrow it grows, like weeds in an eager field
the love lifts me, it is built with muscle
curved like the hip of a violin and sings like it too
its song carries me into my greenest spring
every leaf that falls whispers deep admirations for the love we
portray before meeting the ground
sinking sweetly into soft soil kissing a fallen sun
waiting for light to impregnate with new life
or maybe just waiting
for a love that might never come
but we beckon
and call
still
call quietly to the soil, bellow to the solar system
tell us what we know deep—not alone, not alone,
never alone
tell us what we remember, tell us what we forgot
grief and a murder of crows can still fall
in love with mourning, with dusk.
Photos from the Event:
Image Description: A long table with a black tablecloth covered with Split This Rock merch and books.
Image Description: Clint Smith, Everyday Kind of Love's featured poet, stands on stage beside Billy Sanders, the ASL interpreter for the evening.
Image Description: Split This Rock Staff and Board pose for a group photo. From left to right: Tatiana Figueroa Ramírez, Alexa Patrick, Danielle Badra, Chelsea Iorlano, Alexandria Petrassi, and Gowri Koneswaran.