Poets Speaking Out for Social Justice, June 26

I've know the folks behind the Riverwood Poetry Series since the Connecticut Poetry Festival back in 2008, then the re-named Riverwood Poetry Festival in June 2009.

I was pleased & honored to be asked back to read at this event with poets Eileen Albrizio, Jean-Yves Solinga & Elizabeth Thomas. Equally thrilling was to read at the Harriet Beecher Stowe Center in Hartford, CT -- not just the author of Uncle Tom's Cabin, you know.

After Sonya welcomed us to the Center, Julia Paul talked about the Riverwood Poetry Series, then Kathryn Kelly & Terry Klein did tag-team introductions of the poets.

I was up first, starting with "The Communion of Saints," important to name our own heroes, then a selection of political poems reaching back as far as "I Thought I Saw Elvis," up to the recent "Chatham Peace Vigil, & including poems from Poeming the Prompt & Baghdad/Albany & other Peace Poems.

Eileen Albrizio read just 2 pieces, one a poem, the other an excerpt from an unpublished novel. The poem, "Oh God, What Have We Done?" combines 2 incidents from 1998, the murder of Matthew Shepard in Wyoming (for being gay), & the murder of James Byrd in Texas (for being black); it's in her collection Perennials: New & Selected Poems (Ye Olde Font Shoppe, 2007). The excerpt from her novel was set in the past in North Carolina & was the grim tale of the lynching of a young black boy, I guess for the crime of reading.

Jean-Yves Solinga is from the Marhreb but has been in the USA & taught in schools for years. In "The Sheets Have to Be Clean" he brought in elements from an NPR interview & Rembrandt, contrasting the daily work of women with the killing work of men. Other poems were "Haiti from Barbecue to Misery," "Litanies for the Devil" (philosophical ponderings on evil), a poem about the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina "The Danzinger Bridge" (on exceptionalism), & "Africa in Harmony" on the nature of exploitation, in the images of animals.

The poetry of Elizabeth Thomas centers around her experience teaching, & many of the poems were performed from memory. She opened with her "favorite poem" "Revelation" about a student with a tee-shirt that says "I Am God." Then a piece in the language of drug addiction, "On Words & English Teachers." In "The Games We Play" a student returns to Israel to fulfill military service, with similar issues brought home in "I Ask My Grand Daughter," & in "Mother's Work" she created a celebration from piled up images of birth & violence & the work of women. Her final poem was a collaborative piece (including a line from her mother) from folks at a health care center for Seniors proclaiming what was "Beautiful."

The reading was followed by a lively & provocative question & answer session, with the audience challenging us poets to articulate in ways different from our poems the issues of writing about politics & social justice & protest. Perhaps the hardest part of our performances today.