Poets Against War continues the tradition of socially engaged poetry by creating venues for poetry as a voice against war, tyranny and oppression.
In this month of July, 2005, two images haunt me. They are not related and perhaps they only gesture indirectly towards issues looming large in the contemporary world we inhabit - barbarism, terrorism, imperialism, impoverishment, plagues, the absence of ethical codes and a hierarchy of values, mad materialism, intellectual and artistic narcissism... Yet, both of these images illustrate to me the raw faultline where 'private' and 'public' meet.
In late January 2003, in response to an invitation to a symposium by Laura Bush to celebrate "Poetry and the American Voice," Sam Hamill declined; a longtime pacifist, he could not in good faith visit the White House following the recent news of George W. Bush's plan for a unilateral "Shock and Awe" attack on Iraq. Instead, he asked about 50 fellow poets to "reconstitute a Poets Against the War movement like the one organized to speak out against the war in Vietnam...to speak up for the conscience of our country and lend your names to our petition against this war” by submitting poems of protest that he would send to the White House. When 1,500 poets responded within four days, this web site was created as a means of handling the enormous, unexpected response.
Since then, the "accidental groundswell" grew to include poets from around the world. There are presently more than 20,000 poems in this, the largest poetry anthology ever published. Poems from Poets Against War have been presented in person, by invitation, to several representatives of the U.S. Congress; many of them have since been introduced into the Congressional Record.
Poets Against war is a volunteer organization dependent upon the financial contributions of friends and members. Please help support our efforts.