Av den anledningen känns det betydelsefullt att inleda med att citera deras deklaration, i sin helhet.
Mission
Split This Rock cultivates, teaches, and celebrates poetry that bears witness to injustice and provokes social change. It calls poets to a greater role in public life and fosters a national network of socially engaged poets. Building the audience for poetry of provocation and witness from our home in the nation’s capital, we celebrate poetic diversity and the transformative power of the imagination.
Split This Rock explores and celebrates the many ways that poetry can act as an agent for change: reaching across differences, considering personal and social responsibility, asserting the centrality of the right to free speech, bearing witness to the diversity and complexity of human experience through language, imagining a better world.
Split This Rock is dedicated to revitalizing poetry as a living, breathing art form with profound relevance in our daily lives and struggles. Our programs integrate poetry of provocation and witness into movements for social justice and support the poets of all ages who write and perform this vital work.
The name "Split This Rock" is pulled from a line in “Big Buddy,” a poem from Langston Hughes.
Don’t you hear this hammer ring?
I’m gonna split this rock
And split it wide!
When I split this rock,
Stand by my side.
***
Min första poet i det här sammanhanget är inte ny i bloggen. Den könsneutrala Andrea Gibson skrev jag om i en Utblick i oktober förra året. Hen var då i Sverige för att delta i invigningen av en Spoken Word-klubb i Göteborg. Hen har nyligen uppträtt på Nalen i Stockholm. Idag är det Pride-parad i Stockholm. Det är ett utmärkt tillfälle att åter lyfta fram Andrea Gibson i bloggen.
Jag anser att Andrea Gibson är den viktigaste poetiska kraften för amerikansk samhällsförändring sedan Adrienne Rich.
Andrea Gibson växte upp i Calais, Maine, men bor sedan 1999 med sin partner i Colorado. Andrea Gibson brinner för och pratar om frågor kring könsnormen, politik, sociala reformer och de svårigheter HBTQ-människor stöter på i dagens samhälle.
Hens senaste bok heter "Pansy". Ordet är ett slanguttryck för en feminin, homosexuell man.
Första dikten jag har valt beskriver hur en person nästan upphör att fungera när hen är mitt uppe i en relationskris. Jag kan verkligen känna igen mig i den.
During the worst of it, by Andrea Gibson
(from Pansy. Write Bloody Publishing, 2015.)
During the worst of it
everything was radio static.
Everything was inching toward the bathtub.
I woke fevered and flailing
in a fit of my own ghost.
I forgot yesterday was yesterday.
Nothing was as honest as
the quiet
at the end of a scream.
My mind was an always flaring rash
and I was tearing through everyone I loved
to scratch the bloody wound of it.
I felt the bugs come,
chasing my sanity like a starved fire.
I got out of bed one morning
to pour a glass of water and discovered
the kitchen faucet was gone.
I thought it was
the creepy prank of someone who had snuck
into my house in the middle of the night.
Then I walked back into the kitchen
to find the faucet had never been missing.
...
***
Det finns flera dikter i boken som tar upp rädslor och acceptans. De handlar om att vara annorlunda, att vara rädd för att flyga, att vara rädd för att stå på scen, att känna panikångest, att bekämpa hemska minnen. En angenämare barndomsvandring utgör nästa exempel.
Bit, by Andrea Gibson
(from Pansy. Write Bloody Publishing, 2015.)
I miss the crickets
and the creek
and the blueberry field
that stained my baby teeth.
I miss running
for my life
through the cut grass.
I miss the clotheslines
my grandma's hands
played like a stringed guitar.
I miss the colors
in the church windows,
how it didn't matter
that you couldn't see outside.
I miss sneaking up the stairs
to the steeple to rest
my hands on the gold bell.
I miss believing
in the same thing as everybody else.
My mother
fixing my hair for my school pictures.
Me, fixing my heart
on the rowdy wind.
Every kid I knew
wanted to grow up to be a star.
I did too, but I was afraid of the dark
where the stars lived.
I'd go fishing in the puddle
behind Stevie's house.
I'd tie a gummy worm to a string
that was tied to a stick.
My mother called me home
before anything bit.
***
I en av dikterna låter Andrea Gibson en vuxen individ prata med sitt yngre jag om samhällets normer, där budskapet är glasklart Du duger som du är och alla är lika viktiga. Jag ger er de tre första och de tre avslutande verserna i dikten.
 |
| Andrea Gibson |
A genderful pep-talk for my younger self, by Andrea Gibson
(from Pansy. Write Bloody Publishing, 2015.)
They want you thinking you're bad at being a girl
instead of thinking
you're good at being yourself.
They want you to buy your blush from a store
instead of letting it bloom
from your butterflies.
They're telling you to blend in,
like you've never seen how a blender works,
like they think you've never seen the mess from the blade.
...
You, the guest of honor, in your own skin.
Your heart: the law, you will break over and over
to let the light in.
Your body, not theirs.
Your spirit, not theirs.
Yours.
Your life, your fury, your compass,
your steel floating in the water, your water
to break in the streets.
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