Joseph Green is a spoken word artist, educator, and motivational speaker

with over 15 years’ experience in youth development. He co-founded poetryN.O.W., a nonprofit providing creative writing programming and curriculum for DC-area youth and schools. While serving as Split This Rock’s Director of Youth Programs for 3 years, he transferred poetryN.O.W’s work into Split This Rock’s care. Joseph has performed, hosted, and featured throughout the United States, including at the White House, Kennedy Center, and American Society of Addiction Medicine’s annual conference. He has qualified to compete at Poetry Slam Inc.’s National Poetry Slam five times and ranked 16th at the 2011 Individual World Poetry Slam. In 2017, Joseph started LMSvoice to help people and socially conscious organizations discover and share the transformative power of story.

This poem is reprinted from Split This Rock’s Poem of the Week Series. Feel free to share it widely. Please include all of the information in this post, including this request and a link to the poem at Split This Rock’s website. Thanks! 

For more poems of provocation and witness, please visit The Quarry: A Social Justice Poetry Database at www.splitthisrock.org

The Making of Busboys and Poets

A Seat at the Table: The Making of Busboys and Poets

We’re proud to announce A Seat at the Table: The Making of Busboys and Poets, the new memoir from our CEO and Founder, which reveals the vision, challenges, and triumphs behind opening Busboys and Poets. Packed with misadventures, unexpected triumphs, and insights on race, business and politics, Andy Shallal’s memoir takes us on a “How I Built … Continued

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For Langston Hughes on His 123 Birthday

Speech given on February 1, 2024 in Havana, Cuba In 1927 Langston Hughes walked into a Cuba amid an emerging community of artists, intellectuals, and radicals.  He saw a “sunrise in a new land [– a day – in his words]sic – full of brownskin surprises, and hitherto unknown contacts in a world of color.”  … Continued

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Palestine Week 2024

January 18, 2024 – January 25, 2024 In keeping with our ongoing mission of uplifting racial and cultural connections, Busboys and Poets is hosting Palestine Week (January 18 through January 25, 2024). This week-long series of events will offer a diverse range of programming featuring Palestinian food, music, dance, poetry, discussions, and other enriching events. … Continued

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Split This Rock Poem of the Week: Doritt Carroll

intermittent apnea of unknown causation   I. the first time it happened i thought i was being strangled four fingers compressing each side of my throat no air II. have you ever eaten crabs? first you flip the breast tab up then you fold the crab back like the binding of a new book then … Continued

#BusboysGood: AJ Head

#BusboysGood: AJ Head

Busboys and Poets Events Manager AJ Head talks to us about tranisitioning and his creative life.

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#PaintTheStorefronts

These are trying times for people and local, small businesses across the globe. Instead of boarding up our windows after an unfortunate act of vandalism, we’ve responded by spreading messages of optimism and hope by hiring local artists to #PaintTheStorefronts. All of our seven locations are painted, and we are spreading the movement; already we’ve … Continued