Andy Warhol Marilyn Monroe

As I’ve begun to read Gertrude Stein in depth for the first time and reflect on some of my own favorite poetry, I have become increasingly aware of the power of repetition. Sometimes, it seems, the right new word is the word right behind it. In tonight’s Living Room, we will explore how we can use repetition as a tool to revise poems that seem stuck and engage various strategies of repetition to generate new work. First, we will examine repetition in terms of sound, images, and wordplay in poems by Stein, Anne Waldman, Lisa Jarnot, and others. Then, we will engage in several exercises exploring the use of repetition. If you think it might be helpful, bring a poem in progress that you think could use revision via repetition exercises. And as always, bring in eight copies of a poem that you would like to workshop.

Writers of all ages, backgrounds and skill levels gather Tuesdays at 7P to read new work, the work of someone else or to just be in the engaging company of other writers. Your donation of $5 helps SPLAB continue our programming. Please bring 8 copies of the work you plan to read. Copies are no longer provided by SPLAB.

Living Room happens @ SPLAB in the Cultural Corner at 3651 S. Edmunds. (Look for the SPLAB sign on the wall and come inside.) We’re 2 blocks from the Columbia City Link Light Rail Station. (Parking is available on the school grounds.)

The Surdna Foundation of New York has awarded a $150,000 grant to The Loft Literary Center to support and expand its spoken word programming.

For a decade the Loft has been staging Equilibrium (or EQ) – a spoken word performance series – to showcase local and national artists of color, as well as indigenous artists.

EQ founder Bao Phi says the Surdna grant is important both for the Loft and for spoken word in general.

Multi year grants are hard to get. This is our tenth year and for the last two years funding has been difficult to find. To the Loft’s credit it has kept the program running, paying for it with general operating funds.

Spoken word has always been marginalized, and also difficult for people to categorize. So as a result it’s hard to seek out funding – do you apply for a theater grant? Or a literature grant? For us to get this grant and recognition is a big deal, because spoken word is largely still a marginalized art form.

Phi says that EQ pays decent wages for artists, sound technicians, and other talent, but also believes in being accessible to low-income audiences, so tickets are only $3 -$5. That means it needs outside funding to stay alive and healthy.

Phi, an accomplished poet in his own right, has been actively involved in community organizing since he was a teenager, and the series reflects that commitment. A recent performance looked at indigenous land rights, pairing a Native Hawaiian artist with a Palestinian performer.

In addition to supporting the Equilibrium program, the Surdna grant will also fund spoken word immersion fellowships, in which six to eight artists of color or indigenous descent complete self-designed projects that help them better understand the communities and issues that inform their work.

According to the Loft, the hope is that these efforts will increase exposure and conversation around the art of spoken word, and lead toward broader acceptance of spoken word as a literary genre.

After all these questions are answered, the poem goes through a series of edits, condensing each choice and word down to perfection. Then, another of poetry’s unique aspects comes into play, for poetry is one of few art forms that’s still recited, read, performed or spoken. Poetry still offers the storytelling element that humans crave—that primal instinct tells us to listen as words float across air, watch for gestures, gaze into eyes, hear the tone changes and pull the underlying story from words unwritten.

While more often today, poetry has become a thing read in solitude, still, spoken-word poets memorize and perform in-depth pieces, and others attend readings to share their works aloud.

The Alabama State Poetry Society held it’s Spring Meeting in Fairhope on April 28, and it reveled in the art of written and spoken poetry during workshops and award ceremonies.

About 50 poets and guests attended Friday night’s readings and Saturday’s workshops and awards. The group enjoyed socializing with fellow poets, learning from each other and honing their craft.

During Friday night’s reading, ASPS President Joe Whitten entertained audience members with nostalgic poems that spoke of days gone by, and told tales of eccentric family members.

ASPS First Vice President Barry Marks shared poems of loss and mourning, but was sure to add in his usual sense of humor with a few tidbits about the Southern obsession with food, irritating cats, and so on.

The next day, attendees heard spoken-word poetry from Ayodele Heath as he performed original poems about the pride his father taught him, standing up for Atlanta’s homeless population, and about overcoming stereotypes and racism. The poet pulled energy from a seemingly unlimited source as he portrayed a wide range of emotions, used facial expressions and gestures to pull the audience into his story, stretched pauses and changed tone to bring words of the poem to life.

He performed “Etymology of Ain’t” and the audience chuckled as he began, “Ain’t, used to be aaain’t, which comes from ‘am not,’ as in, ‘I ain’t you,’ but also ‘is not’ as in, ‘he ain’t me.’ But also, ‘has not’ as in, ‘I ain’t been and don’t wanna be.’”

Heath taught a workshop on performing poems, divided members into groups, and gave each group a poem to analyze, then perform, with himself and other groups offering feedback after each performance.

Alabama’s Poet Laureate and ASPS Board Member Sue Walker taught a workshop on “Uncreative Writing” where she explained options for writing found poetry.

Some handy tools for new poets, breaking through writer’s block, or just as means of stretching further into one’s creative spirit, Walker explained forms such as the Oulipo where writers take someone’s poem and apply the “S+7 method,” i.e. they take each noun in a poem and replace it with the word found seven places beneath it in a dictionary. Then do the same with each verb.

Another exercise asked participants to select their own replacement words in established poems.

“Look at ‘The Caged Skylark’ by Gerard Manley Hopkins,” Walker began. “Now I want you to underline all the nouns and put your own nouns there.”

Now go back and circle all the verbs, and put your own verbs. Now the adjectives…”

For Pablo Neruda’s “It is Born,” she asked members to cross out the second line and add their own line. Then change the fourth, the sixth, the eighth, etc. Then go back and change line one, three, five, and so on.

At the end of the process poets had created an original work and some shared their finished products aloud.

Also Saturday, ASPS members and guests attended an awards ceremony for the spring contests. Poems from all over the U.S. were submitted to fourteen contests, each with unique themes, line limits and form restrictions. For example, The Sonnet Award, sponsored by Joe and Shelia Mau, asked for traditional (rhymed) or blank verse sonnets—14 lined poems. They could be on any subject.

The Character Award, sponsored by Jodi Adamson, asked for submissions of any form and line limit, but on the subject matter of a famous person or made up character—a persona poem.

A total of 454 entries by 65 poets were read by 14 judges, and resulted in the awarding of $1,080 in prize money.

For more on ASPS, visit alabamapoets.org.

As Thunder fans, we’ve had to deal with some bad music videos. After sitting through things like “Reppin’ That Blue and Orange” and “Beard Like Harden”, I was losing faith in Oklahoma City’s creativity. But finally, a solid piece of work has come through with this spoken word performance of “Thunder Up, Son!”.

I know, you could sit here and tell me that the guy has no flow, or the mechanics are wrong, or blah blah. But I don’t care. I enjoyed it, and he certainly put in more effort than people remixing terrible pop songs. It kind of reminded me of Desmond Mason’s Rap, “We Dem Hornets”. If this spoken word could be set to music, it’d be a totally awesome rap.

The only real issue I take with the piece is that he says Derek Fisher will break somebody’s ankles. Derek Fisher couldn’t break anybody’s ankles when he was 24, much less when he’s 37. Also, I like how there’s an SUV driving in the background at 0:23, and some random guy stumbling in the background at 0:40.

When Ceez Liive, born Cynthia Keteku, took home second place in the 2009 New York Knicks Poetry Slam Program, she was 18 years old and things have not been the same since.

In the past three years, she has made a name for herself on the slam poetry circuit winning awards like the 2009 Urban Word NYC grand slam championship; taking 2^nd place in the first ever Youth Poet Laureate competition; and winning both the 2010 Philadelphia Youth Grand Slam Championship and the 2010 Robert Redford Going Green Grand Slam Championship.

She has also been featured at the Nuyorican Poet’s Café, Madison Square Garden, The Chicago Theater, The Saban Theatre and several other venues throughout the United States.

Her solo show “Ma Heels” premiered in December 2009 at the Dance Theater Workshop. The Dance Theater Workshop featured four poets who were selected to go on a four-month journey within themselves and compile solo shows.

 “This contemporary one woman show is about a girl’s journey to comfort within her family and sexuality,” said Ceez said.

Ceez recently made her break into feature films with a part in the 2011 film “Gun Hill Road” that was a finalist for the esteemed Jury Award at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival.

Ceez has dedicated her time to offering inspiration and solutions for issues as teenage pregnancy, absentee parents, date rape, racism, poverty, peer pressure, illiteracy, cultural identity, community, gang crime and violence.

Ceez has only been to Martha’s Vineyard once before for a wedding when she was a young girl. However, upon meeting Carolyn Sands at the Connecting for Change conference in New Bedford, both were determined to get Ceez to the Island.

Ceez will offer an Art of Spoken Words workshop at the Pit Stop on Saturday at 2 pm that is open to all ages.

“I teach poetry workshops and hip hop workshops, but my favorite is when I get to incorporate both,” said Ceez. Her method usually consists of choosing a lyric from a hip-hop artist who uses a lot of poetry in their rhymes.

“Then we remix them,” she explained. “We mix them up and break them apart and then the class will write a poem of their own, from their own life perspective based on that.”

Ceez is also planning to work with anaphora poems at the workshop.

“An anaphora poem is when you take one line and it repeats at the end or beginning of every stanza. After we do the remixes, I’ll probably have them pick one line from their remix and use that as the anaphora.”

While her trip to the Island this time will be brief, Ceez is glad that she’ll have time to workshop here as well as perform.

 “Workshops are more intimate and my goal in life is to really meet as many people as I can,” she said. “So I want everybody to come out. I want to meet as many people that live on the Island as possible.”

Ceez Liive at the Pit Stop Workshop Saturday May 19,2012: Art of Spoken Words workshop (open to all ages) 2 pm $10 entry / $5 members; Spoken Word Performance 8 pm (doors open at 7 pm) $10 entry/ $5 members

Cheyenne JohnsonWriter

Spoken word, a form of poetry designed for onstage performance, first became popular in the 1960s due to the poetry and political group “Last Poets,” and has since grown across the country. In recent years, the art of spoken word has taken hold of the University of California Santa Barbara, grabbing attention in both campus and downtown venues while uniting poets and performers together in a mix of theater and literature. Events dedicated to exhibiting the stylish art form have become more and more of a common occurrence here at UCSB, shown by this week’s schedule of several spoken word events on campus, as well as many others throughout the quarter.

“We recognize that it’s a form of expression for the community that we serve,” said Satya Chima, officer manager of the MultiCultural Center, a key sponsor of most on-campus spoken word events. “I remember it being popular when I was in college… I feel like it’s kind of been here for a while.”

The MCC recently co-sponsored “An Evening of Spoken Word” at the downtown Coffee Cat, where poets from UCSB and the community could perform their works.

“The last event we had in downtown Santa Barbara was packed. A ton of students came from the campus,” said Chima. “It felt like a really awesome event in a large city. We hope to do that kind of thing again, where we can bridge the community and the campus together.”

The UCSB community is far from lacking talented spoken word poets. A Poetry Slam Showcase rocked the Hub in January, featuring eight UCSB poets, including second-year literature major, Demi Anter. Anter said spoken word poetry has a life other written forms of expression can’t match.

“I think a big part of it is the fact that it’s live, rather than reading a poem on the page,” said Anter. “You have the experience of interacting with an audience.”

As for the recent explosion of interest in the genre, Anter said it’s to be expected considering the younger age of nationally known poets.

“People get more exposed to it right now, and it just happens that the focus is now on a lot of young performers,” said Anter. “Maybe there’s something impressive about people that are that young and have mastered it already.”

The evolutionary nature of spoken word seems to be a key component of its existence, Anter believes.

“I think it has continued and will continue into the future,” said Anter. “There will probably always be changes to it, but I think this desire to see a live show and watch and appreciate, will always be there.”

Otha Cole, the marketing associate at the MCC, got into spoken word while he was still a student at UCSB. The now-Los Angeles resident said spoken word on campus has changed since his college years.

“Especially on this campus, there’s more group spoken word,” said Cole. “More students have heard of it. It’s definitely picked up a lot of steam and I think that’s because for the most part, it’s pretty new as a part of pop culture. I’m not surprised it’s getting bigger.”

Cole said that spoken word involves an emotional response that written poetry doesn’t necessarily possess.

“There’s a lot of tension in spoken word, even if it’s a light hearted poem,” said Cole. “The way it’s even said is, I don’t want to say aggressive, but there’s a tension.”

For Cole, spoken word stands unique against other forms of expression, and isn’t just about reading aloud. Spoken word offers a rare form of expression where speakers are allowed to interact with their audience.

“I wouldn’t be able pick up a Robert Frost poem and say it in a cool cadence and all of a sudden it’s spoken word,” said Cole. “You’re able to really tell the difference.”

The MCC is hosting another evening of spoken word this Thursday, May 17 at 6575 Seville. MCC staff welcome all “conscious poets to the stage” to artistically express themselves, and add more spoken life to our community.

When: 05/19/12 @ 7:00pmCost: $10 (ages 18+)Call: 255-4770Web: www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=118305834848558

More Information:Madison’s top slam poets to battle for a slot on the national team

Madison Grand Poetry Slam on Saturday, May 19 at Gennas

On Saturday, May 19, Madison’s top slam and performance poets will compete for a chance to represent Madison at the 2012 National Poetry Slam in Charlotte, North Carolina, August 7-11, 2012. The May 19 slam will be the culmination of the 2011-2012 season, and the poets who have proven themselves in competition at the monthly Urban Spoken-Word Poetry Slam will battle not only for a place on the team, but also for the title of Madison Grand Slam Champion.

The 2008 National Poetry Slam, held for the first time in Madison, proved that the city as a whole-not just the University and its successful First Wave Program-is hungry for spoken-word, an art form that is really taking off in schools, coffee-shops, clubs, theaters and more all around the country. With Madison being one of the epicenters of this movement (right alongside cities like New York, San Francisco and Chicago), the city’s national slam team will serve as ambassadors for both Madison and spoken-word in general.

The Grand Slam is going to be wild show, both as an entry point for people just getting into the form and as a climax for people who have been following the slams all year.

EVENT LISTING DETAILS:Madison Grand Poetry SlamSaturday, May 19Genna’s Lounge$10 | 18+ | 7pm

Where:
Genna’s Lounge105 W. Main St. , Madison , WI 53703
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By MICHELLE BACON

Updated: 2012-05-17T01:32:07Z

Evans the Death

•  “Ekki Múkk,” Sigur Rós: Though no one has any idea what Icelandic band Sigur Rós is saying, its music expresses a language superior to the spoken word, engaging hearts and minds with ambient sounds. In this newest single off the upcoming “Valtari,” Jónsi Birgisson’s haunting voice weaves beautifully through a majestic instrumental abyss.

  • “Telling Lies,” Evans the Death: From the second this song starts, you get the feeling that Evans the Death is an energetic, fun pop band. Katherine Whitaker, whose voice has a female Morrissey-like tone and mood, adds an enchanting layer to this easygoing but infectious, hooky punk pop alongside screaming Joey Santiago-esque guitar riffs. • “Small Town Moon,” Regina Spektor: Spektor returns with a single from her new album, “What We Saw From the Cheap Seats.” Through piano arpeggios and her characteristic quirky vocal enunciations, the singer/songwriter provides a narrative and shows why she appeals to both mainstream and more musically minded audiences.• “The 1960’s Divorce Rate Blues,” The Empty Spaces: This song is featured exclusively on “Secret Handshakes,” a 12-inch vinyl collaboration between Kansas City’s Golden Sound Records and the Record Machine, and it seems like the perfect summertime tune to spin. The Empty Spaces bring in ’50s- and ’60s-style retro pop as delightful and nostalgic as the first ice cream cone of summer.• “More Than You Need,” Bobby Conn: Though his album “Macaroni” indulges itself in inconsistent styles and political statements, “More Than You Need” is a refreshing detour into the melodic. The song displays a bright psychedelic ’60s-brand pop reminiscent of the Zombies and other bands of the British invasion.• “Every Single Night,” Fiona Apple: With a commanding and brash yet unobtrusive and jazzy voice, Fiona Apple has an impeccable ability to be amazingly personal without seeming insincere. She continues this trend of channeling herself into her music without overproduction or apology.• “Pillows,” Spirit Is the Spirit: This is another track from “Secret Handshakes.” Lawrence band Spirit Is the Spirit delivers well-produced, high-quality indie rock that we’re used to hearing from the Record Machine. The group’s charm and talent shine through on a percussive, jovial track that blends elements of indie pop and psychedelic rock.

Copyright 2012 . All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Something fresh and exciting is happening at The Pit Stop this weekend – a performance that’s sure to inspire some buzz around the Island.

Spoken-word artist, actress, and teacher Ceez Liive will present a power performance of her poetry and host an afternoon workshop this Saturday, May 19.

Ceez Liive (pronounced “seize live”) is a 21-year-old from the Bronx who has already sparked a good deal of attention from the media for her words and stage presence. Despite her age, hers is the talent of a seasoned poet, and she delivers her works with a mature and compelling performance style, with none of the awkward posturing of youth.

At 18, Ceez won second place in the annual Knicks Poetry Slam. She has gone on to perform throughout the U.S. at venues as prestigious as the Nuyorican Poet’s Café on New York’s Lower East Side, The Saban Theatre in Beverly Hills, Philadelphia’s historic Freedom Theater, and the landmark Chicago Theater. She’s made appearances on WQHT Hot 97 and Kiss FM in New York City and been featured in The New York Times and The Daily News. Ceez, who had a small part in the 2011 film “Gun Hill Road,” performed at the film’s premiere at the Sundance Film Festival. She has written a one-woman show, which she has performed in New York, Washington D.C., and Philadelphia.

The accomplished poet also teaches workshops at a shelter and several middle and high schools. In 2010 she founded a nonprofit, Wordplay Poetry and Hip Hop for teens. Currently she is a junior at Fordham University at Lincoln Center, Manhattan, majoring in English with a minor in theater. Although Ceez hopes to eventually pursue more work as an actor, for now she’s committed to finishing school. “Anything you’re passionate about you have to keep as a focus,” she said.

From basketball to poetry

Ceez’s first passion was for basketball. She attended the Academy for Careers in Sports in the South Bronx and pursued basketball with the drive and dedication that she has shown in all of her endeavors. However, when an injury sidelined her for two years, she turned her talents elsewhere. Ceez started out as a rapper, but influenced by a teacher, she learned a love of poetry and switched to written word and slam poetry performance.

Once she started taking her craft seriously, Ceez sought out open mic nights and other platforms for performance. “I went any place they told me I could say a poem at,” she recalled. “I used to not eat any food at all and saved up all the money my mother and my father gave me and that I earned to do open mics.”

While still in high school, Ceez travelled regularly to Boston and Philadelphia to perform. At 18 she moved to Philly. “I told my mom, ‘I need something. I don’t know what it is but I’ve got to find it.’” In Philadelphia she had discovered a community of burgeoning young poets and quickly made her mark there.

However, she kept up her commitment to the kids she had been working with in the Bronx, taking a bus back to New York three times a week. “I knew their dreams, the goals that I had helped them set up,” she said. “I saw them getting into the wrong crowds because they didn’t have positive role models. The only reason that people do negative things is that they don’t have positive influences.”

Of her teaching method, Ceez said, “I have a program that teaches hip hop. The way that a school would introduce Shakespeare, I use Tupac. I would find a link between Tupac and Shakespeare.

“I use hip hop as a tool to get people into poetry and get kids into something. For me, what I see it does for kids is it builds a mold for each of my children so they know where they want to go.”

After three years, Ceez moved back to New York when her younger half-brother’s mother died. That was a time of rediscovery for her. Fixing up her brother’s old apartment, which was in need of major repairs, she says was a metaphor for her life at the time. “It’s all about rebuilding. I’ve been rebuilding and making use of the rubble. There’s a lot of bad that comes back from coming back.” But also a lot of good. Ceez reenrolled at Fordham and completed her autobiographical one-woman show, called “Ma Heels,” which she is hoping to bring to new audiences this year.

Ceez has mined the tragedy and hardships of her life for material. She has written about a murdered friend and lost love. However, she is primarily a social and political commentator. In addressing issues such as war and environmental tragedy, Ceez manages to find the sweet spot between insipid sensitivity and angry ranting.

Her fluid movements when she recites (or, in the lingo of slam poetry, “spits”) her poems never appear artificial or stiff; rather she performs the agile dance of a basketball player, displaying both power and finesse.

Her unfeigned humility is very engaging, and she never resorts to an in-your-face approach. Even when spouting condemnation, Ceez is never abrasive. She scores her point with strong imagery, positive energy, and a message of hope.

Ceez strives to share her experiences with the kids that she mentors. “I want to show them the doors that basketball and poetry and music have opened up for me,” she said. “I have seen so much of the world and what it has to offer. The beauty and the negative has made me the person I am today.

“For me rap has such a negative image. I’m an MC – master creator. I live hip hop. You’re never going to hear negativity from me. That’s not natural. I write about the things that people actually see but that aren’t necessarily brought to light. It’s all about positivity and keeping your head up. I like to write smiles onto everyone’s faces.”

Ceez Liive will be the featured guest on Carolyn Schmidtke’s “That Radio Show” tonight, May 17, at 5 pm.

Workshop with Ceez Liive, 2 pm, Saturday, May 19, The Pit Stop, Oak Bluffs. $10; $5 for members. All ages welcome.

Ceez Liive Performance, 8 pm, Saturday, May 19, The Pit Stop, Oak Bluffs. Doors open at 7 pm. $10; $5 for members.

Excerpt from “I Want My Life Back” about the Exxon Valdez oil spill:

Where do we go when the bottom of the food chain falls? Eleven of your workers will never get their lives back. Their wives will cry on the shoulders of Polaroids. The children will seek favors of their fathers that will never come home. But you will go home to your three million dollar home, your one million dollar wife. She will kiss you and feel nothing – stare and see nothing, but a child with a detonator in his mouth and eleven oil slicks on his hands.

Afghanistan Online
Poetry Translation Centre (UK)
Selections from the Poetry of the Afghans, online e-text of the 1869 book by Henry George Rafferty at Sacred-Texts.com
Afghanland.com

Since the Western invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, US and UK media have paid some attention to poetry’s place in contemporary Afghan society:
from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting:“Why Afghan Women Risk Death to Write Poetry,” by Eliza Griswold (April 2012)
from Bomblog:“Postcards from Kabul: Nathalie Handal,” interview by Ram Devineni (November 2011)
from BBC News:“How is war changing Afghanistan’s poetry?” (video article, September 2011)
from PBS NewsHour:“Poetry as a Weapon of War in Afghanistan,” by Jeffrey Brown and Daniel Sagalyn (March 2011)
from BBC News:“Afghan poets tackle scars of war,” by Dawood Azami (April 2009)

Right now, poetry is crossing the cultural divide in both directions—from west to east, with the travels of an American poet in Afghanistan:

from the Detroit MetroTimes:“Detroit Poet in the War Zone,” by M.L. LieblerM.L. Liebler is a Detroit performance poet, literary arts activist and Wayne State University professor who has travelled the world teaching poetry. This month he ventured halfway around the world, to Afghanistan, and he has come back with inspiring stories of poetry as the vehicle for intercultural connections: he met with the poets of the Afghan Women’s Writing Project for a workshop in a secret location in Kabul, he used Langston Hughes’s “A Dream Deferred” poem and Eminem’s hip hop lyrics to get Afghan kids writing poems, and he taught the poets of Kandahar “to click their fingers after poems and say ‘dig that!’” He’s posted from Kabul, Jalabad and Kandahar so far—after Kabul, he was forced to suspend blogging for security reasons, but now that he has left Afghanistan his backlogged posts are going up, and readers can keep an eye on the Liebler archive page linked above to catch future installments.

And, not without disjuncture and controversy, poetry is also flowing from east to west, with the UK publication of a book collection, Poetry of the Taliban, in English:

from The Independent (UK):“Controversial Taliban poetry anthology to be published,” by Andrew Buncombe“Controversy has erupted over the publication later this week of an anthology of Taliban poetry designed to ‘shed light on who these people actually are.’… Confronted by a barrage of criticism, including condemnation from a former British military commander in Afghanistan, the editors of the volume of 235 poems have defended their project as a way to challenge people’s assumptions.”

from The Guardian (UK):“Taliban poetry: the gentle, flowery side of the story?,” by Robin Yassin-Kassab“Poetry of the Taliban, therefore, is a brave and useful project. Published this week, and already denounced in some quarters as ‘self-justifying propaganda,’ it offers a perspective on the conflict through the Other’s eyes, something worth more than a library full of cold analysis.”

from The Huffington Post:“Taliban Poetry Collection Sparks Controversy,” by John Lundberg“The book’s editors—two scholars—acknowledged that one strongly voiced complaint they hear is that their book will be giving voice to terrorists…. The poems themselves support both sides of the debate. Some of them rail against the U.S. and its allies, conveying a predictable fanaticism…. Others celebrate love and landscapes, and even convey doubt….”

What are your thoughts on these sorts of poetic conversations between distant and often opposing cultures, dear Readers? We welcome your comments below.

Previous Postings on Poetry as a Medium for Cultural Exchange:Poetry is a Peace Bridge Across Divided Societies (December 2007)The Language of Poetry Bridges the Gulf of Cultural Conflict (November 2006)Poetry Connecting Civilizations in Conflict (Coleman Barks, Rumi and Iran, May 2006)Britain Chooses a Poem to Represent Earth to Aliens (October 2005)