I love Nye’s poetry because of the rich way it brings a new perspective to everyday things and the little things in life, while not shying away from the world’s big horrors. Her first poem here is a great example of questioning the smallest things (and making them beautiful through that new way of seeing), … Continue reading
I love how raw, strong, and to-the-point activist poetry usually is. There’s no time to beat about the bush, no space to weave pleasantries into the systemic abuse. Aja Monet’s poetry is like that. Her book, My Mother Was a Freedom Fighter was published last year. Below, a few snippets from it, followed by her … Continue reading
“Estados Unidos: el país donde la libertad es una estatua.” (“United States: the country where liberty is a statue”) –Nicanor Parra Nicanor Parra, often described as an “anti-poet”, died on Tuesday aged 103. Parra was a Chilean artist and poet who rejected the formalisms of poetry and abstract, inaccessible, wankiness. He was direct, blunt, unafraid, … Continue reading
I like how her poems etch out a determined resistance using nature-based and human metaphors that link the personal with the political. Dreamwood In the old, scratched, cheap wood of the typing stand there is a landscape, veined, which only a child can see or the child’s older self, a poet, a woman dreaming when … Continue reading
Over the past few months Australians have been subject to a postal poll on whether everyone should have the right to get married, or just male-female couples. In defending sexual diversity, Aussies have created some vibrant and inspiring art – with just a sample of it shared below: Source: ABC Artist: n2o_jo Artist: teganiverson Artist: … Continue reading
By Aurora Levins Morales: Someone posted a message about the bees, how they search, frantically, everywhere, for the flowers that are gone. They said to put out bowls of sugar water for them, so the bees don’t all die, but no one has sugar, and no one has water. Someone posted a message from Carrizales, … Continue reading
land his approach to love he said was that of a farmer most love like hunters and like hunters most kill what they desire he tills soil through toes nose in the wet earth he waits prays to the gods and slowly harvests ever thankful the missing the way loss seeps into neck hollows and … Continue reading
Warsan Shire‘s poems are angry and they argue and rage and weep. As fighting poems should. A British poet, born to Somali parents in Kenya, Shire’s poems have been read at rallies, and in homes and not-so-homes. She writes about people who are made invisible in society – often refugees, migrants, and other marginalised groups. … Continue reading
Trump called the people here rapists. White people in the US think it’s legit that Mexican migrants work there for less, doing the hardest work, with no rights. You know the story, but do you hear about the resistance to the narrative, to the demonisation and discrimination? Does the media tell you what Mexicans, and … Continue reading
Last year, Israeli Defence Minister Avigdor Lieberman called his poems “fuel for terror attacks”. By that, he meant that Darwish stood up for Palestinians, weaving his and their dignity into his detailed and visually arresting poems. Below, is one of the poems that enraged Lieberman so, ID card. Write it down! I’m an Arab My … Continue reading
Miguel M. Morales grew up in Texas, in the US. He worked there as a child laborer and migrant or seasonal farmworker. He wrote this poem – by a migrant, about migrants. This Is a Migrant Poem This is a migrant poem a farmworking poem, a poem that covers itself in long sleeves to avoid … Continue reading
Poet Mari Evans died last month. According to media reports, some 500 mourners attended. Evans had written of her funeral: When I die I’m sure I will have a Big Funeral … Curiosity seekers … coming to see if I am really Dead … or just trying to make Trouble … Evans was one of … Continue reading
