Creativity is non-acceptance, wonder, rebellion
I wonder what the tiny hummingbirds and pink-white bougainvillea trees and lizard babies with their wide, searching eyes think of the country run by organised crime and transnationals when they stumble upon disappeared activists hidden in wells bought judges, dead rivers, industrial towns and zombied shoppers what kind of ecosystem do they think they have... Continue Reading →
Palestinian poet and author Heba Abu Nada's last tweet before she was killed by Israeli airstrikes. And here is a video where she is reciting one of her poems (translated, somewhat roughly, to English).
So much cool stuff to share. I love how in slam poetry people just say it like it is and that is the point. Unlike other mediums where it's frowned on to just scream out what isn't f-ing okay. At a time when the media is leaving big holes in its coverage of the coups... Continue Reading →
On Friday, there was a mass shooting in Chiapas, Mexico, and seven Tzotzil people were murdered. But there was zero coverage in the English media, because it happened in Mexico and not the US, and because they were original people, not wealthy tourists. The seven people had fled their homes due to violence in the... Continue Reading →
“But I don't shut up and I don't die.I liveand fight, maddeningthose who rule my country. For if I liveI fight,and if I fightI contribute to the dawn.”― Otto Rene Castillo There is a poem stuck to the door of the small room where I work and write, and it's by Otto Rene Castillo. It's about... Continue Reading →
Here are a few of my own poems, written in moments of nostalgia, sadness, and anger. -Tamara Pearson A well-contained crossness she was so silencedher broken glass ragewas sandsitting as little hillsin the landscapes of her feetshe stayed a mother and wifewell after the man and children were goneunable to pronounceher needsNo one, no place,... Continue Reading →
Yassin is a Palestinian writer living in Israel, and her poems are youthful, raw, and sincere. I've picked three that I particularly loved, and you can find more prose and poetry on her blog. No wonder we throw stones On the morning of 12th August,My house was razed to the groundIn Silwan, where I was... Continue Reading →
Like everything with writing, creating powerful metaphors comes with lots of practice, and more hard work and crappy writing than most people are comfortable with. Metaphors are not spontaneous bursts of genius.
Daisy Zamora is a Nicaraguan poet who has written about women's rights, politics, revolution, art, history, and more. She fought against the Somoza dictatorship in the 1970s, and joined the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) in 1973. During the revolution she was program director for clandestine Radio Sandino, and after the FSLN came to power,... Continue Reading →
Jorge Madrid is a Honduran activist whose opposition to current right-wing president Juan Orlando Hernández saw him receiving death threats and having to flee the country. He was also a student leader when then President Manuel Zelaya was overthrown by a coup in 2009. He says the stealing of the elections in 2017 and direct... Continue Reading →
The following three poems are hard and liberating. Read them out loud and with one fist clenched. Laura Passin is a writer and scholar specialising in contemporary US poetry and gender studies. I am not old - by Samantha Reynolds I am not old, she said I am rare I am the standing ovation at... Continue Reading →
Farrah Akbik is a British-Syrian poet based in London who writes to raise awareness of the hardships Syria and Syrian refugees are going through. Al Sham (*another name for Damascus) I want to lay my head in the lap of Ghouta, Dull my senses with pomegranate wine. Drift like Ophelia down the river Barada, Lose... Continue Reading →
A Dead Sun - by Bejan Matur I peel night from the dead sun's flesh and like a scarf wrap it round my head The graves of children - by Bejan Matur So – we died. We flitted out of darkness. Beaches bore witness, as did the tiniest of stones. Night and stars streamed above us where... Continue Reading →
Many of the wonderful ways that people have captured this most stifling of things: “We've forgotten much. How to struggle, how to rise to dizzy heights and sink to unparalleled depths. We no longer aspire to anything. Even the finer shades of despair are lost to us. We've ceased to be runners. We plod from... Continue Reading →
resistance words 