Split This Rock Day 4: DC Poets Against the War
I dragged myself out of bed Easter morning to go to the final panel of the conference, an evaluation and wrap-up session with some of its organizers and DC Poets Against the War founders, Sarah Browning, Melissa Tuckey, Joseph Ross, and Esther Iverem.

The program started late, so I had a crab eggs benedict and good tea and ended up joined for breakfast by a Philly-area writer named Elliott and Marianne Ehrlich Ross, who is also a founding member of DC Poets Against the War. We talked politics and Marianne gave me a copy of a journal called Poems Against War, which had her fine poem, "Numbers," in it. Several people I met at the festival gave me chapbooks or journals of their poems, which gave me a lot of joy: Oooh, presents!

The panel itself was interesting, as they recounted the history, the "We-have-to-DO-SOMETHING" longing that birthed DC Poets Against the  War and the conference itself. Mostly I was just amazed, inspired, and guiltily ashamed of my own lack of involvement by encountering this wonderful group of people. It was here that I was moved to tell Sarah Browning that I thought I'd been waiting my whole life for this.

People had lots of good suggestions for keeping the momentum going -- my favorite was creating an opt-in email listing of participants to allow the magnificent connections to continue to blossom, and I really hope they do this, although I suspect after this huge birthing they will need some recovery time before they do anything.