Write on!

The Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression, The Music Resource Center and Starr Hill Presents have come together to sponsor “First Amendment Writes,” a contest to support the best poets and songwriters in our area.
    What started out as an event planned to publicize The Free Speech Monument on the Downtown Mall outgrew its original venue. Suddenly, the event had enlisted a group of extremely well-respected judges and a pocketful of prize money. Now anyone 16 and older can enter the contest by going to www.musicresourcecenter.org and filling out the entry form.
    One piece of original work, either song or poetry, must be submitted by October 31. The initial entries will be narrowed down to a group of finalists, and those finalists will perform at Starr Hill on Thursday, November 16, in front of a heavyweight panel of judges with a lot more credibility than Simon Cowell. DMB violinist and community activist Boyd Tinsley will be in the house, along with ATO and Red Light artist development exec Bruce Flohr and former Poet Laureate Rita Dove, who will be representing la poesia. As MRC Director Sibley Johns says: “To have persons of their stature support this contest completely validates what we are trying to achieve.” Contest finalists will strut their stuff in front of a crowded house and the discriminating jury.
    Poetry finalists will also have an opportunity to post their work on the Free Speech Wall Downtown.
    “We are supportive of this kind of project in general,” says The Thomas Jefferson Center’s Associate Director Joshua Wheeler, and he gives a lot of credit to MRC’s Johns, who was instrumental in incubating the idea. Wheeler also says that he is very enthusiastic about the idea of supporting an arts-related project, “because the arts remind us on an emotional level of the benefits of free expression, something we too-often forget when confronted with speech we don’t like.”
    The contest is billed as “a celebration of the creative heights that can only be achieved when artists are free to express themselves on any theme, subject or idea.”
    I guess I better polish up my haiku on the beauty of state-sponsored censorship.