SIDESTEPPING REAL

15 May 2008

About ProtestPoems.org

Here is my little spiel (at least what I intended to say) from a radio interview next to no one heard:

When I read about Saw Wei (Wai) in a PEN RAN alert, I remembered that it wasn't that long ago that a blog group of amateur writers were talking about acrostic poems. I thought it might be an idea to ask people to write acrostic poems for a good cause and that I could mail them to the authorities – in the same way that PEN and Amnesty protest.

I thought all this for about 5 seconds and then requested poems through the Babel Fruit facebook group and some poetry listservs. Then I panicked. I figured I would be swamped with a hundred poems over the weekend.

I was certain people would do this again and again, so I set up the protestpoems.org site. I thought that posting the poems online might also motivate unpublished poets to take part. I wanted to keep the collections of amateur and professional writing on individual topics separate from the human rights journal.

I imagined a year's work of protest poems collected in chapbooks and distributed free at festivals and conferences.

What happened with Saw Wei was that I received lots of notes from people telling me what a great idea it was. And then I received fourteen poems. Most of them by established poets I know. I was very disappointed.

Amateur writers on the net have communities that do regular writing prompts and I want to engage them in writing projects that may make a difference. Even if the collections that are mailed make no difference at all, it may open people’s eyes to what we take for granted, and that makes a difference.

In many countries PEN is a organization that is, in part, about prestige: who is good enough to actively be involved with protests. I think it’s easy to write your name on a petition. I also think it is easy to forget the next day what you signed. Just sitting down to think, “Tibetan songwriter imprisoned: what is there to write about?” takes effort and engagement. You don’t forget the next day.

It should be about the grassroots. When freedom of speech is taken away, it’s felt at the grassroots. Just look at the importance bloggers make in the world today. And how many of them have become targets of oppressive governments.

I’ve gotten some emails from people who say they are uncomfortable meddling with the politics of other countries. I tell them that this is only a matter of free speech, not endorsing anyone’s political views. It is basically a reminder: “Let them talk”. Even if you’re only letting them talk so you can laugh at them later, or giving fools a megaphone so they can prove what fools they are.

What saddened me was that I found out a month ago that another literary journal asked for acrostic poems, inspired by Saw Wei, to make an online chapbook (not as a protest, but as a tribute). Of course, I think that is wonderful. But I was surprised that they had many more submissions than protestpoems.org had contributions, although we’d placed calls for poems in the same venues.

I’ve withheld public presentation of the work at the request of the writer, if it is to be used elsewhere or if it is just downright embarrassing. Protestpoems.org isn’t about prestige at all.

It is just a more engaging way to sign a petition.

A more annoying way to clutter a mailbox!

I can’t help but wonder why people really write political poetry. Who they write it for. I have actually had amateur poets email me with urls, telling me I can look around to see if I can find anything useful for "my project". I am not promoting writers. I actually get very upset when this happens. Not really by the arrogance, but by the naivety, the irresponsibility and lack of awareness. I hope no one would ever give anyone carte blanche with their words for a political cause.

Having said that, I do have friends, professional writers, who have sent me a previously published poem they thought was right for the protest.

There are over 90 people on protestpoems.org’s mailing list. And I think that nearly all of them must believe that someone else is taking care of it this time around. I think they're sure that if they “sit this one out” someone else will have taken part.

The truth is - no one is there to pick up the slack.

protestpoems.org

Remember, there's no requirement for online publication. Your words can be a secret between you, me and the diplomats and presidents we are out to piss-off.

*

And soon back to my self-deprecating self. Yeah, right.

_____________________________________________________
Be nice to the mad lady; she's not a fragile as you think: ren powell
Sign up for calls for poems:Protest Poems. Do you really have an reason not to?

14 May 2008

It Looks Like It

I guess I am on hiatus. Unexpected and unintentional.
I am finishing my book and sleeping. A lot.
No one ever told me that all the shit would hit the fan all at once.

Whoever said life starts at forty didn't have teenagers or bunions.

03 May 2008

Because there are other scary things we can make fun of easily

02 May 2008

Amnesty

27 April 2008

"June" by Shi Tao

Yahoo Complicit in Shi Tao's 2005 arrest. He is serving a 10-year sentence for sending an email to a pro-democratic site: Asia Democracy Foundation.

However, his poem "June" is traveling as a PEN torch passing through one translation to another to spotlight the Chinese government's abuse of Human Rights.

"June" Shin Tao PEN Human Rights China Olympics

25 April 2008

More Honest than Therapy

The commentators on CNN were talking about how boring the newest musical on the West End is. Then guaranteed something not boring: the golf headlines.

So I switched channels and snagged onto a French film somewhere near the beginning. One of those films that the French do so well: the kind that makes you question your own basic “goodness”. Not in an abstract kind of way. Not the kind of films that give you an excuse to stay up until 4 am discussing existentialism with Adonis from your Tuesday-Thursday philosophy class. And not the kind of film that poses moral questions that you can ponder while doing the laundry.

This was movie-as-virus. The kind that seeps through your semi-permeable membranes and makes you wonder if the nightmare on screen is really on screen, or if some Innocent image you’ve encountered has turned dangerous only by replicating what is already in you.

And you’re afraid to turn to your companion and ask if they see what you see. In part because you fear they will say no and realize you are lolling about in that black hole everyone else has sealed up with their millions of years of evolution. Your companion will whisper into all your friends’ ears and no one will sit with you at lunch.

And in part because they might nod and you will both race to change the channel and try not to look each other square in the face until the baseness has been flushed out with repeated episodes of “Touched by an Angel”. Which will take a long time because you will start drawing parallels based on immature word play.

And it is about this point where you want to walk to the nearest police department or asylum (whichever is closer) and turn yourself in. After you’ve finished watching the movie.

When I say you, I obviously mean me—so relax.

All right, I admit I sat through the movie. No one else was home.

It wasn’t fantastic. Sometimes the symbolism was as subtle as rockets taking off, as fountains shooting into the air (which, really, seriously was the last scene of the film). I kept telling myself that this is way to obvious to be art.

Not that that was comforting—telling myself I wasn’t watching a dirty film. On the contrary. I must want to see the symbolism. All these images that are making me so uncomfortable: should I be watching this? Is it naughty? Is it far worse than naughty? Is it really Innocent (are you getting by now this is the title of the film?) and I am a warped, deeply disturbed human being?

Somewhere near the end of the film I stopped worrying about all that. I don’t know what the director intended. I have no idea what other people carry away with them after watching this film. But by the end of the film I stopped watching through the eyes of who I know I am supposed to be. I stopped trying to guess what a pedophile would see.

I watched through the eyes of my nine year-old self. I recognized the ambivalent feelings I had then. Not knowing whether to curl up with a cup of cocoa or vomit. It is probably not a coincidence that I sit here sucking on peppermint candy, wondering if the milk I poured on my cereal hadn’t been just a little off.

Starting to wonder why, in elementary school, no one would ever sit with me at lunch.

I take all that back. I am just going to say that I really didn’t watch that movie. I am a good girl.

Innocent French Films Therapy Morality

14 April 2008

His Prerogative

I am supposed to be doing something else. I am always supposed to be doing something else. One day I will give up on doing something else altogether.

I am not going to write about politics. I choose who I spar with. People I respect (but whose synapses route differently than mine) and people who don’t resort to name-calling and hyperbole. Which means, of course, I don’t spar with the candidates. I just throw pillows in my living room. And at my husband. Sometimes at my teenager.

Today I did it. I through a pillow at my kid’s head in what he saw as a completely unprovoked attack.

But, you see, once again it has come up in the local political debate (and by local in Norway, I mean national): should teenagers be allowed to vote? This first time I heard this I thought it was a joke. Then I hoped it was a joke.

This morning I saw the proposal in the paper again and threw a white bolster at his head. He was eating at the time, so now my bolster is flecked with butter stains and smells a bit like cinnamon.

I kind of like cinnamon, so that’s okay. And he managed to get most of the butter out of his nose. The rest will lubricate his brain for algebra. So that’s okay, too.

In Norway kids can’t get a drivers license until they are eighteen. Can’t drink whiskey until they are twenty-one. But they must be responsible enough to make decisions regarding the political policies of a nation.

I am not saying teenagers aren’t interested in politics. Most of the students I taught were. But most of them still thought that lions could lie down with lambs, if only they had a good mediator. (And this isn’t a shot at the Oslo accords. Really. Seriously. At the risk of “the lady doth protest . . .”)

I have always wondered about my own right to vote. I voted before I learned that I could hate a person for their ideology. Before I knew what my own ideology was.

I question whether I was able to make the right choices that would affect the mortality of people who were celluloid images taken from places I had never even read about except in the Herald Tribune. When I hadn’t a grasp on my own mortality.

With every little creping, patch of skin I become more aware of the fact that I will die. That other people die, if not suddenly, then little by little. Demanding care.

I hope my son gets a good job.

I guess I should stop throwing pillows at him.

He may vote to take my voting rights away when I am no longer able to run a mile. Or tolerate listening to My Prerogative for the thirty-second time in a row.

I didn’t really want to talk about growing old, but I began this by saying I wouldn’t talk about politics.

voting teen voting aging Britney Spears generations