Walking Poem: A March Against Censorship

On Friday afternoon, after spending a little time at the university's info table, talking up the MA/MFA program and Triquarterly Online, I headed to the corner of Connecticut Ave. and Woodley Road, just up the block from the Marriott Wardman Park Hotel and a stone's throw from the National Zoo to join the participants in SAYING IT: A Walking Poem Against Censorship. Co-organized by Cara Benson, Caroline Crumpacker, Tina Darragh, Jennifer Karmin, and Dana Teen Lomax as part of the Belladonna* Collaborative, and reprising Jennifer Karmin's 2006 Walking Poem Project in Chicago, nearly a dozen people, joined at various points by DC residents themselves, walked through the chilly but picturesque Washington streets to the Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Monument at M St. NW, just a few blocks down from Dupont Circle (a place where I spent many a day and night in my youth), for a moment of silence, a reading of the US Bill of Rights and the UN Charter on Human Rights, and some of the impromptu poems that passersby and participants along the way (including at the conference) had drafted.  We also answered inquiries from people we encountered about what "censorship" meant (letting them know that all of the marchers were not in agreement about either the meaning of the term), received a good deal of affirmation from younger people, and talked among ourselves about the importance of political action of this sort at an increasingly institutionalized even like AWP, in which networking and politicking assume increasing importance. Many thanks to the organizers, fellow participants, and everyone who joined us, even temporarily, honked, smiled, or even registered what this little intervention was trying to get across.

Caroline Crumpacker, Dana Teen Lomax, Jennifer Karmin & David Emanuel
 
DC poets Phyllis Rosenzweig & Tina Darragh, collecting impromptu poems

Rosenzweig and Darragh talking and walking with a DC resident
 
Cara Benson, pink poster in hands, at the crosswalk
 
What the doorman wrote (for Rosenzweig and Darragh)
 
With Longfellow (me, Cara Benson, Jennifer Karmin, Dana Teen Lomax, Caroline Crumpacker, Phyllis Rosenzweig & Emily Skillings (standing above)
 
Reading, declaiming, listening
 
Dear America: a sandwichboard poem (Dana Teen Lomax & Jennifer Karmin)