Poets for Peace
an article by Linde Kanahele

"Poets for Peace" was prompted here in Hawaii by locally featured poet, Oceya, after she read an article on prominent poets and writers who gathered at a church in Vermont for "A Poetry Reading In Honor of the Right of Protest as a Patriot and Historical Tradition."

She engaged the help of The Live Poets Society in organizing an island wide tour April 13th in Kailua and ending the 23th in Punaluu, Hawaii. A core group of poets camped at various sites including, Spencer, Mahukona, Pahoa and Punaluu and were available for demonstrations that included: Poet line up, open mike, writing rings, pot luck and a graffiti banner that chronicled local expressions of each place we visited. Dinner Easter Sunday planned at Jo Mama's in Pahoa was an all day event free to the public.

"Poets for Peace" demonstrates the diversity of peace through free expression. It was an exercise of island wide tolerance to witness and support the voice of peace. We talked with and heard over 50 poets and garnered over a hundred graffiti artist's epithets that entirely covered a 30' x 8' Banner. Lea, a speaker at the Naalehu theatre event is now traveling with the Banner in NYC as part of the 30/30 conference on peace. Brian Evans of Metamagic.org, is volunteering to help construct our new web site, PoetsLive.org, that the collected poems will be posted on.

I can assure you I was quite moved, literally a shift occurred in my being from this experience. We are planning on doing it again next year, war or no war. Peace goes on.

Finally, I would like to share with you the common thread that was repeated where ever we went. As so eloquently said by Lea, the more that personal peace can be prepared within one's own life, the more that peace will be reflected in the world. She spoke of her own terrorists that create disharmony in herself as well as others. So capturing the opportunity to encounter our own personal terrorist really is a powerful tool and something we can do something about. This attitude was very different from the general righteous flavor of advocacy when the tour began.

DISCUSSION

Question(s) related to this article:

POETRY TO PROMOTE PEACE CULTURE
I invite members to visit the following websites that contain Peace Poetry

poems for peace
poetry contest

As a reader, you are invited to join in the discussion of this article based on any of the above question(s): just click on the question, read the previous comments and add a new reply. You may also enter a new discussion topic on this article - see bottom of this page.

Thematic forum(s) in which this article is being discussed:

THE ARTS AND A CULTURE OF PEACE

Latest reader comment:

resist, reflect, protest, express, question, ignite, remember, write

call for entries

An invitation for submission of original poetry. The selected poems will be included in a special anthology of poetry published by Seagull Books, Calcutta and will be posted as original writing in the PeaceWorks newsletter and website.


rules

• participants between 12 to 18 years of age are eligible
• last date for submission of poems:
 extended date 1st September 2004
• entries should be emailed to   peaceworks@seagullindia.com
• participants may submit more than one entry
• poems accepted will be edited and corrected for obvious   spelling, grammatical, or typographical errors.
• sending an entry will automatically grants the seagull   foundation for the arts permission to use it as part of   any PeaceWorks publication.

This report was posted on May 18, 2003. The moderator is Tony.

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