Split This Rock, Part 7 — Saturday: Afternoon Reading, April 21

The final day of Split This Rock ended with 2 featured readings, one in the afternoon & one later in the evening, & each deserve their own report. The afternoon readings were hosted by Clint Smith & Franny Choi, whom I remember from her electric performance at STR 2016. To begin they played a recording of the late Adrienne Rich reading one of her poems, with the prophetic line, “everything we write will be used against us…”

The DC Youth Poet was Kenny Carroll who performed a love poem, a memory of a brother, “back when something was good…” a tender, moving performance.

The first of the featured poets was Terisa Siagatonu, a National Slam finalist, Slam coach & mental health advocate, who taught us the correct pronunciation of "Samoa."  She read her contrapuntal poem in three columns, “Moana Means Home,” printed in the Split This Rock section in the April Poetry magazine. “Congregation” was a discursive, narrative piece about an aunt who died, & her grandfather, then on to a couple of environmental poems (she had been at the Paris Climate Conference in defense of Samoa), “The Day After American Samoa Was Underwater” which had been a Split This Rock “Poem of the Week”, & another from Poetry “Atlas.” She finished up with a piece dedicated to the youth open mic poets, a poem using a phrase from Lucille Clifton, “I’m still alive...” as a repeated refrain.

Kazim Ali also began with a poem from Poetry, the opening section of “The Voice of Sheila Chandra” inspired by the singer who has lost her voice, then the autobiographical (many of his poems are “personal” or spring from incidents in his life), “Origin Story,” then “John,” “Drone,” & “Check Point” (at each of which he gives a different response, making the personal political). “Inquisition” used a sex memoir to delve into history & violence. His poem titled Yannis Ritsos was not just about the Greek poet, but also referenced Mahmoud Darwish & Fadi Joudah. He ended with a poem he had read earlier in the festival, “Golden Boy,” & hearing it again I could appreciate more the intricacies of the weaving lines & the puns.

I had seen Ellen Bass at couple of the panels that I attended earlier in the festival; another thing that I like about Split This Rock is that the “stars” are often in the audience of the different sessions. Her poems are like story telling, or essays. She began with “Taking Off the Front of the House,” a humorous take on the everyday where she & her partner are like on a stage in their own house. A poem “Indigo” for her daughter began with a description of jogger, then imagined an alternative life. “God’s Grief" was a litany, while “Bearing Witness” came out of her experience working with victims of child sexual abuse. She also read the 2 Langston Hughes poems titled “Island,” & ended with “Jubilato Homo” taking the form from Jonathan Swift to write about transgender folk.

While sufficient unto itself this reading also served as a prelude to the finale of the festival, the reading later in the evening. So I wandered off to find The Pig, a pork-themed restaurant, for a quiet dinner.