Browning is director of Split the Rock, a national network of socially-engaged poets established in 2008. STR and Foreign Policy in Focus will read dissident poetry on Saturday at embassies of Burma, Turkmenistan and Yemen to protest poetry censorship in those countries. What’s the purpose of Split This Rock?
Split This Rock is dedicated to integrating poetry into public life. All of our programs bring poetry, provocation and witness to a larger audience, bring that poetry into social justice movements and help support and promote the kind of poets that write that poetry.
What other countries ban poetry?
There are many countries that ban poetry. There was a young woman who was arrested and sentenced to a year in jail in Bahrain for reading a poem at a public demonstration. Poetry can imagine change and give voice to those aspirations, so they’re dangerous to the powerful who want no opposition.
Do poems have to be political to be banned?
Writers will often write in code, they’ll hide their message in material that seems inoffensive. Often that goes under the radar of the censors, but not always. And so sometimes what seems like not a political piece can be banned or censored or the writer can be persecuted.
Who’s your favorite poet?
We’re very lucky to have in our city a Burmese poet living in exile, Kyi Nay Kuang. She’s had to live in this country for at least 20 years, she’s gives voice to that experience that must be so difficult and alienating.
Does D.C. have a strong poetry community?
It has a brilliant and tightly-knit poetry community. D.C. spoken word poets have won the national poetry slam. It’s very lively and it’s built on the shoulders of a long history of social engaged writers and artists, mostly African American.
— Leigh Giangreco
