I learned about the challenge below on This Mom's blog. I've already got poetic lines curling around my ears and heart. Consider yourself invited to spin lines of poetry, too.
I find this especially meaningful in light of today's report from the Iraq Study Group, about which I just heard on NPR. While listening, I also listened in on this story on Here and Now about Dr. Abdul Sattar Jawad, a former newspaper editor in Iraq and a dean at a Baghdad university. He's now teaching at Duke as part of the Scholars at Risk program, where he is researching T.S. Eliot and translating Shakesperean sonnets into Arabic.
Dr. Jawad speaks of how poerty is very close to him now and quotes a line of Eliot's The Wasteland, and brings it home to the Tigris river, which, he says, "is no more singing. It is, you see, sweating oil and tar, and you see the bodies of the tortured and murdered people floating in the river.
"I'm longing - living in nostalgia - to see my country, my Baghdad rising up again... We have to terminate this cycle of violence and hate."
Sigh.
And if you choose to write a poem for the Iraqi people (whether or not you choose to submit), I'd love to know. And perhaps we can share our works on the Story Midwife gallery.
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The Challenge: Write a poem for the Iraqi People, something that you want to express to their citizens.
Deadline: Extended to May 2007
Who: Anyone, any age can write a poem and submit it to be included into The Gift of Words: Poetry for the Iraqi People
Fruition: Poems will be translated in Arabic, put into a booklet and sent to Iraq.
Gift of Words, c/o Cynthia Bryant- Poet Laureate of Pleasanton, PO Box 520, Pleasanton, CA 94566 or [email protected] if you do have email. Be sure to include your contact information and age (if you like).