Mar 14, 2008  |  By: KATHI WOLFE  | COMMENTS     

I’m a LESBIAN and visually impaired, but it’s when I say I’m a poet that I sometimes really clear the room.

Having been forced to memorize bad poetry at school, some people are afraid that I’ll recite atrocious verse. Since most poets make little or no money from their work, my presence is awkward in a culture that doesn’t value unpaid work. As W.H. Auden famously said, poetry makes nothing happen, so what good are poets at problem solving in a world troubled by everything from homophobia to the Iraq war?

From March 20-23, in the first Split This Rock Poetry Festival: Poems of Provocation and Witness, hundreds of poets from the Washington, D.C., area and across the country hope to prove Auden wrong. On the fifth anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, against the backdrop of a society in crisis from hate crimes against LGBT youth to the mortgage meltdown, we will converge on the nation’s capital.

The late playwright Arthur Miller said, “attention must be paid.” In the festival, we’ll give voice to our country’s ills and lift up the voices of reflection, opposition and imagination.

Why do I think we can defy Auden’s dictum? Because, though we poets lack material riches and can’t pass laws with our poems, we have something many millionaires and legislators don’t possess: the power of our words and of our dreams. Last year, I taught poetry to blind, low-income, African-American teenagers in an after-school dinner program.

The poems that the youth read and wrote helped them connect with themselves and their peers. Some of these teens were ravenous because they didn’t get enough food to eat at home. Yet, one night, a 14-year-old boy took his time coming to the table. “I’m not going to eat,” he said, “until I write a poem about this great Chinese food!”

Whether you support Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama or John McCain during this campaign season, I bet that you’d like our nation to find a new direction. “Who better to create a new vision for the country than poets?” asked Festival director Sarah Browning. “Language is power.” With this power comes responsibility — especially at this time in history. “As citizens and artists, our obligation has never been greater,” Browning aptly said.

Sometimes, I imagine that many others feel as I do: as if you’re alone — struggling against homophobia, racism, sexism or other forms of injustice. Encounters with inequity are hurtful, whether they are instances of overt bigotry or subtle slights.

Poetry is not a luxury, the late African-American lesbian poet Audre Lorde said. It’s essential if we are to bridge and celebrate our differences.

Split This Rock will bring together a cornucopia of poets (queer and straight, young and old, people of color, people with disabilities and people from all social classes). The festival will have a queer component. Renowned gay poet Mark Doty and lesbian performance artist Alix Olson will be among the featured poets. “LGBT in Dupont” and “Downtown (Washington, D.C.) Walt Whitman” walking tours will be given during the conference.

Too often, we in the queer community only think about our issues. The Festival offers the chance to widen our horizons to include other issues and people different from ourselves.

“Poetry is the most powerful way to get your message across,” said Split This Rock coordinating committee member Regie Cabico. “[It’s] an island of 17 syllables, 11 words. Pass it on to someone.”

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t like preachy poetry. The Goldwynism “if you want to send a message, call Western Union” is spot on. But good political poetry is, by turns, vibrant, passionate, inviting and ironic.

Olson, in a funny prose poem called “Dear Diary” in the “Beloit Poetry Journal,” uses mock teen relationship speak, to figuratively talk about a relationship with the United States. She writes, “Today my country and I broke up. … For all her talk of family values, she’s not dependable … It’s all me, me, me; well, I need us, us, us. And I can’t be in love with a country I don’t trust. But me and some friends, we’re planning on staging a critical intervention.”

Poetry is the quiet, but powerful intervention that we need now. I hope you will join me at Split This Rock.