reading, reading

I have been reading heaps of poetry, but so far not written anything new this year. Thats a little bit worrying. It feels that I am overloaded with material and still processing it all. I came across a blogger from Gaza who had postedthese pictures that chilled me to the bone and I can't stop thinking about them. Pictures of charred childrens bodies, racist graffiti and Israeli children learning about guns along with thier ABC's. Why don't we see these pictures in the western media. We are 'protected' from the ugly truth.

I think the reason I am struggling to write is that I am worried that my poetry is going to be too political and somehow that seems something looked down on, makes your poetry a turn off. But if my poetry is my way of moving through the world and exploring reality how can I ignore the things that concern me most? How can I not speak because it may make someone feel uncomfortable? I talked about this with Joanna today and what came out of that is that for me writing highly personal poetry is fine for me not scary, but to put my feelings about politics and social justice out there seems very threatening. I mean last year when I dared to do a play on Veganism I got slaughtered, somehow everyone became very angry and defensive like I was somehow judging them - I wasnt. I am just trying to be true in my writing/poetry to who I am. I can only write my experience, my perceptions. I guess what made me start to worry was when I presented Inshallah to be workshoped a comment was made that I was brave to present such a political poem...and that unsettled me a bit. I began to doubt the validity of doing that....was it somehow wrong???

What I am loving is that in my research I am coming across many poets, not widely know that I am loving. My frustration is that alot of these poets work is only available on the net, no one carries their books in NZ so I have been ordering poetry books from overseas....exspensive!! Here are a couple of my favorites. The first by Brian Turner an American poet, retired marine ho served in Iraq. The second by Puerto Rican poet Martin Espada.

Eulogy

It happens on a Monday, at 11:20 a.m.,
as tower guards eat sandwiches
and seagulls drift by on the Tigris river.
Prisoners tilt their heads to the west
though burlap sacks and duct tape blind them.
The sound reverberates down concertina coils
the way piano wire thrums when given slack.
And it happens like this, on a blue day of sun,
when Private Miller pulls the trigger
to take brass and fire into his mouth.
The sound lifts the birds up off the water,
a mongoose pauses under the orange trees,
and nothing can stop it now, no matter what
blur of motion surrounds him, no matter what voices
crackle over the radio in static confusion,
because if only for this moment the earth is stilled,
and Private Miller has found what low hush there is
down in the eucalyptus shade, there by the river.
PFC B. Miller
(1980-March 22, 2003)
Brian Turner

from Here, Bullet

Imagine the Angels of Bread

This is the year that squatters evict landlords,

gazing like admirals from the rail

of the roofdeck

or levitating hands in praise

of steam in the shower;

this is the year

that shawled refugees deport judges

who stare at the floor

and their swollen feet

as files are stamped

with their destination;

this is the year that police revolvers,

stove-hot, blister the fingers

of raging cops,

and nightsticks splinter

in their palms;

this is the year

that darkskinned men

lynched a century ago

return to sip coffee quietly

with the apologizing descendants

of their executioners.

This is the year that those

who swim the border's undertow

and shiver in boxcars

are greeted with trumpets and drums

at the first railroad crossing

on the other side;

this is the year that the hands

pulling tomatoes from the vine

uproot the deed to the earth that sprouts the vine,

the hands canning tomatoes

are named in the will

that owns the bedlam of the cannery;

this is the year that the eyes

stinging from the poison that purifies toilets

awaken at last to the sight

of a rooster-loud hillside,

pilgrimage of immigrant birth;

this is the year that cockroaches

become extinct, that no doctor

finds a roach embedded

in the ear of an infant;

this is the year that the food stamps

of adolescent mother sare auctioned like gold doubloons,

and no coin is given to buy machetes

for the next bouquet of severed heads

in coffee plantation country.

If the abolition of slave-manacles

began as a vision of hands without manacles,

then this is the year;

if the shut down of extermination camps

began as imagination of a land

without barbed wire or the crematorium,

then this is the year;

if every rebellion begins with the idea

that conquerors on horseback

are not many-legged gods, that they too drown

if plunged in the river,

then this is the year.

So may every humiliated mouth,

teeth like desecrated headstones,

fill with the angels of bread.

Martin Espada

from The Republic of Poetry