Thursday 5 October 2017

My name is Rachel Corrie



23 year old American Peace activist Rachel Corrie was  was crushed to death by an Israeli armoured bulldozer in Rafah, Southern part of the Gaza strip, on March 16th, 2003 while undertaking nonviolent direct action to protect the home of a Palestinian family from demolition. Justice has never been served for her, along with many others who have been killed due to  Israel's occupation. In 2005 Corrie's parents filed a civil lawsuit against the state of Israel. The lawsuit charged Israel with not conducting a full and credible investigation into the case and with responsibility for her death. They sued for a symbolic one U.S dollar in damages  to make the point that that the case was about justice for their daughter and the Palestinian cause, she had been defending. In August 2012, an Israeli court rejected their suit.
Her death was a "regrettable accident" for which the state of Israel was not responsible, a judge ruled, dismissing the civil lawsuit brought by the family.
According to Judge Oded Gershon of Haifa Court she had " put herself in a dangerous situation" whilst dressed in a bright orange jacket and acting as a human shield. Israel to all intents and pupose  declared itself not guilty of Rachel Corrie's murder. The world I think sees things differently.
The home Rachel Corrie died trying to protect was razed, along with hundreds of others. She was murdered whilst protesting against home demolitions and injustice in Gaza. This court in all effect gave its stamp of approval to the flawed and illegal practices of the Israeli military. This verdict failed to hold the Israeli military accountable for continuing violation of human rights. It was a shocking day for human rights, but a verdict that I am not too surprised about. Again and again Israel acts with impunity, carrying on regardless in an arrogant violent manner. There is no justice when their courts show such contempt, for justice's meaning.
There is no justice too, when the Gaza strip remains a sealed ghetto,there is no justice when countless Palestinian families are made homeless, there houses destroyed, where is the  justice for them or  their friends  after the death of their loved ones.
By disregarding international law and granting Israeli war criminals impunity, the verdict exemplified that Israel's legal system cannot be trusted to administer justice according to international standards.
The fight and struggle will continue, the end result being that we get truthful answers and yes JUSTICE...... the world will not stay silent, and  will remember Rachel Corrie, who courageously died whilst living her dreams, staying human, and showing solidarity with her beloved friends, the Palestinians.
This will not be last time we hear her name. The memories of her death will not fade, nor that of the death of thousands of Palestinians.The struggle continues against demolition and occupation of Palestinian homes and lands.Her courage and determination and resistance on behalf of the Palestinian people will never be forgotten. R.I.P Rachel, she will  carry on being an inspiration to solidarity activists around the globe,  her spirit lives on.
Meet the heroine behind the headlines.The play My name is Rachel Corrie first seen two years after her death, directed by Josh Roche and edited by the late Alan Rickman and Guardian newspaper editor Katharine Viner, gives a troubling account of an extraordinary young woman's overwhelming commitment to her cause,  the play darts through the diaries Corrie wrote from the age of 12 upwards. The form makes it potent, nothing if not honest. Diaries, being private, have no reason not to be. They're personal, not political, and whatever anyone makes of her standpoint, there's no denying what Corrie witnessed in Palestine  children growing up surrounded by shellfire, farms razed without warning, soldiers shooting at will.
Here is The Guardian's review of the play currently at the Young Vic until the end of October
"Seeing the play a second time, I was struck by Corrie’s solitude and sense of impending death. Yet her journal also records the beleaguered existence of people in the city of Rafah: 602 homes have been bulldozed, many of those that survive have tank holes in the walls, checkpoints prevent people getting to work or registering at university."

https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2017/oct/05/my-name-is-rachel-corrie-review-young-vic

and here is link to Young Vic's web  page:

https://www.youngvic.org/whats-on/my-name-is-rachel-corrie

Here are two further links :

http://rachelcorriefoundation.org/

http://www.rachelcorrie.org/

Wednesday 4 October 2017

Autumnal Awakenings


As leaves die their earthly death
Crisply taking their final bow,
Dejected in the passing of days
Autumn season makes some people sad,
While light and darkness merge and fuse
Close your eyes and dream awhile,
Small things unseen, silently wait in patient time
Wonder can still be stored to sustain and treasure,
Carrying smiles that warm the heart
Hope still curling among the edges,
Allowing words to keep being spoken
Forces that if we allow,we could all share,
Love's presence still ever so powerful
To drown the wallow of sombre melancholy,
Among us this magic, somehow survives
Letting thoughts that currently reside be broken.

Tuesday 3 October 2017

So long Tom Petty ( 20/10/50 -2/10/17) R.I.P


More sad news as iconic musician Tom Petty has passed away aged 66 after he was found unconscious and in cardiac arrest at his Malibu home on Sunday night.
Following conflicting reports, his longtime manager Tony Dimitriades confirmed the sad news late on Monday evening.
"On behalf of the Tom Petty family we are devastated to announce the untimely death of our father, husband, brother, leader and friend Tom Petty," he said in a statement.
"He suffered cardiac arrest at his home in Malibu in the early hours of this morning and was taken to UCLA Medical Center but could not be revived."
He died peacefully at 8:40 p.m. local time surrounded by family, his bandmates and friends.

Petty was born October 20, 1950, in Gainesville, FL, and got the rock ‘n’ roll bug early after hearing Elvis Presley on the radio. He met the King in the early 1960s when his uncle took him to the Presley movie set where he was working. Petty would go on to become rock royalty, hobnobbing with legends and with his band backing tracks or albums by such acts as Dylan, Johnny Cash and the Byrds’ Roger McGuinn.
In a 2006 interview, Petty said that he knew he wanted to be in a band the moment he saw the Beatles on The Ed Sullivan Show "The minute I saw the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan Show — and it's true of thousands of guys — there was the way out. There was the way to do it. You get your friends and you're a self-contained unit. And you make the music. And it looked like so much fun. It was something I identified with. I had never been hugely into sports. ... I had been a big fan of Elvis. But I really saw in the Beatles that here's something I could do. I knew I could do it. It wasn't long before there were groups springing up in garages all over the place."
In an interview with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBS) in 2014, Petty stated that the Rolling Stones were "my punk music". Petty credited the group with inspiring him by demonstrating that he and musicians like him could make it in rock and roll.[
Petty formed his first band, Mudcrutch, in Gainesville at the age of 20. The group became regionally popular but floundered after releasing their sole single, “Depot Street.” (Mudcrutch would release two studio albums in the 21st century, including 2016’s 2, the final album Petty released with any act.) After the band dissolved in 1975, Petty recruited fellow Mudcrutchers Mike Campbell and Benmont Tench, along with Ron Blair and Stan Lynch to form his most famed group, the Heartbreakers.
With their blend of Byrds riffs and rock 'n' roll swagger, slap in the middle of the punk/new wave movement  success arrived swiftly for Petty and the Heartbreakers. After releasing their eponymous debut in 1976, and its follow-up, 1978’s You’re Gonna Git It!, the group hit a commercial groove. Petty's romanticised tales of  of rebels, outcasts  started climbing the pop charts. Songs like "The Waiting," "You Got Lucky," "I Won't Back Down," "Learning to Fly" and "Mary Jane's Last Dance", "Free Fallin  and "Refugee" When he sang, his voice was filled with a heartfelt drama that perfectly complemented the Heartbreakers' ragged rock & roll. He became a fixture on MTV as a music video artist with high-concept clips for singles like “Don’t Come Across Here No More,” “You Got Lucky,” and “Runnin’ Down a Dream.”
He also co-founded the 1980s supergroup collective The Traveling Wilburys with Bob Dylan, George Harrison, Roy Orbison and Jeff Lynne, penning hits such as End of the Line and She's My Baby.
Following the end of his first marriage, to Jane Benyo, after more than 20 years, Petty fought and overcame heroin addiction in the late 1990s, spending time in rehab.“Using heroin went against my grain,” he told Zanes, his biographer. “I didn’t want to be enslaved to anything. So I was always trying to figure out how to do less, and then that wouldn’t work. Tried to go cold turkey, and that wouldn’t work. It’s an ugly fucking thing.”
Petty also suffered from depression, channelling his pain into 1999’s Echo, during which he was also dealing with a divorce. In 2002, he married Dana York and said he had been in therapy for six years to deal with depression.
He remained active though and along with the Heartbreakers, he was inducted into the Rock’n’Roll Hall of Fame in 2002. Petty was also outspoken in his protection of the rights of artists, taking issue with record companies on a number of occasions about what he believed to be unjust practices. Earlier this year he was named MusiCares person of the year for his “career-long interest in defending artists’ rights” as well as for his charitable work with homeless people in Los Angeles.
Petty was frequently touring and known for his skills as a live performer, and wrapped a 40th anniversary tour with the Heartbreaks at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles in late September. In a statement to Rolling Stone last year, Petty clarified that the tour “might be his last big one.” His last album was  2014s's ' Hypnotic Eye,' 
Petty is survived by his second wife, Dana York, whom he married in 2001, his daughters Adria and AnnaKim, and a stepson, Dylan.
So long Tom Petty and thank you for the words and music. R.I.P. My thoughts go out to his family and friends, and fellow heartbreakers.

" " Music is probably the only real magic I have encountered in my life. There's not some trick involved in it. It's pure and it's real. It moves, it heals, it communicates and does all these incredible things," - Tom Petty


Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers - Learning to fly



Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers - Refugee




Tom Petty and the Heart breakers - Free falling



Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers - I won't back down




Monday 2 October 2017

Say no to new proposal to kill Badgers in Wales


Very disappointed to hear that badgers could be being killed again in Wales by our government, paid for with our taxes. The new controls are designed to protect cattle in the low TB area and drive down disease in the Intermediate and high TB areas. One of the most controversial new measures however is the proposed culling of badgers on around 60 holdings with long-term TB breakdowns, some of which are in Pembrokeshire.
It seems like its the case of blaming the badger again at all costs but let us not question the probable blame in the first place - the diary industry. Lets face it if we didn't farm cows , there would be no T.B in the first place, the badger just seems like a convenient form of wildlife to scapegoat for the N.F.U ( National Farming Union ) and its allies. Lets also  not forget that Wales has previously rejected badger culling and has actually made better progress at reducing TB than England without killing any wildlife. Many are viewing this latest move as a purely political one, designed to placate the farming industry. It is important to remember that the vast majority of TB breakdowns are due to poor farming practices, that are then blamed on badgers. This latest move will only serve to legitimise the idea that badgers are central to control TB among cattle.
If  you can raise your voice against this scheme, do it while you can. lease download the following  petition and get friends and family to fill it in, email the politicians responsible and contact your A.M's  if you are able to do so.
Save our badgers and  make sure Welsh Environment Minister Lesley Griffiths and First Minister Carwyn Jones know how unpopular this latest policy is.

https://1drv.ms/b/s!Ai5v3oR1qg63a4LtR4PQ1QpPFL4



Contact details:

Lesley Griffiths A.M

Cabinet Secretary for Environment and Rural Affairs

Office Address: 
   
Vernon House
41 Rhosddu Road
Wrexham
LL11 2NS

Phone: 

01978 355743

Assembly Address: 
   
National Assembly for Wales
Cardiff Bay
Cardiff
CF99 1NA

Email:  Lesley.Griffiths@assembly.wales

Facebook :  www.facebook.com/lesley4wrexham

Twitter :  www.twitter.com/lesley4wrexham

Carwyn Jones :

A.M First Minister for Wales

Office Address: 
   
1st/2nd Floor Suites
3 Cross Street
Bridgend

CF31 1EX

Phone:  01656 664320

Assembly Address: 
  
National Assembly for Wales
Cardiff Bay
Cardiff
CF99 1NA
Phone: 

0300 200 7095

Email: 

Carwyn.Jones@assembly.wales


.

Sunday 1 October 2017

Catalonia : Let the people have their say - Visca la terra!


The Spanish Government have been attempting to censor the people of Catalonia ahead of today's referendum by shutting down websites and social media pages. They are attempting to deny images like that of yesterday's massive rally in Barcelona reaching across Europe and beyond. 
The Catalan government said it was determined to continue holding the referendum  today for regional independance despite Madrid's attempts to stop it. The central government insisted the poll will not go ahead as police sealed off a swathe of schools which had been designated as polling stations.But pro-independence leader Carles Puigdemont, President of the Catalan Generalitat, told crowds in Barcelona that Catalonia had already “defeated the state” in its bid for autonomy.
At a rally attended by thousands in the city to mark the end of the campaign on Friday, he boasted: "We have already won. We have overcome the fears and threats, the pressures and the lies . We have defeated a state that didn't want to let us get here.
"We have achieved what was only a dream, on Sunday we have a date with the future.
"Next week we will begin to walk firmly, dressed in sovereignty and the dignity that the State wanted to take away from us.”
Bands played at the closing rally where people constructed the slogan "Referendum is democracy" in big white letters on a stage in front of a cheering crowd, many draped in the red-and-yellow Catalan flag.
The Generalitat’s Vice-President, Oriol Junqueras, said the campaign had been marked by the "firmness and serenity” of people in defending their rights.
Civil rights are being violated.and the quality of democracy in Spain is being eroded.This is first and foremost about democratic standards and fundamental rights, that what we are having today in Spain is a serious damaging of the democratic tools, of the democratic structures".
He told supporters "To build a better world for us and our children , Catalans don't give up. We are not afraid.  Democrats across the world, we are the product of many difficulties and many defeats, but we are also the seeds of all victories."
Police have confiscated thousands of voting slips, and courts have fined and threatened to arrest regional officials.
Catalonia's High Court ordered Google to delete a smartphone app that the Catalan government was using to spread information about the vote.
Madrid, which claims the authority of a constitution that declares the country to be indivisible, remains opposed to the vote, but also hopes Sunday will be peaceful.
Government spokesman Inigo Mendez de Vigo warned organisers would face criminal charges and said: ”I insist that there will be no referendum on October 1.
In a sign that large crowds are expected on the streets on Sunday, department store chain El Corte Ingles said it would shut three stores in central Barcelona. The government said airspace above the city would also be restricted.
Spain's government said today that police had sealed off 1,300 of 2,315 schools in Catalonia which had been designated as polling station.
But around 163 schools which have been earmarked as voting centres have been occupied by independence supporters.
People have also camped out overnight in schools in an effort to prevent an order by the head of the Catalan regional police to evacuate and close polling stations by 6am on Sunday, before the voting opens at 9am.
However  Spanish police have clashed  clashed with voters as thousands of people flocked to the polls to vote .Catalan emergency services said 38 people were hurt, mostly with minor injuries, as a result of police action. The country's national police began to seize ballot boxes and voting papers from Catalan polling stations on this morning.
Voters have described the police as "aggressive" and giving "no warning" as hundreds of would-be voters were forcefully removed.



Elsewhere in Barcelona, police have detained several people outside the Treball voting centre amid scuffles on the street. Officers dragged some of the protesters away and detained them.
At a polling station, due to be used by the Catalan president Carles Puigdemont in Sant Julia de Ramis, riot police used a hammer to smash the glass of the front door and lock cutters to force their way in.
Scuffles erupted outside between police and people waiting to vote with at least one woman injured and wheeled away on a stretcher by paramedics. Riot police also clashed with voters outside a Barcelona voting station, where dozens of police used riot shields to push people back, a Reuters witness said. People waiting to vote chanted "we are people of peace" and "we are not afraid".
In response to these latest tactics deployed by the Spanish Government, the Independence movement in Catalonia have requested  assistance to help expose the reality in their homeland and to smash this censorship to smithereens.The democratic expressions of the people of Catalonia must be respected , free them from repression. The people of Catalonia have the right to decide their own future. Let them have their say but  the Spanish government has brought Franco’s practices back. Shame on them.
So please share, and get the word out there anyway you can!

UPDATE
2/10/17  00.41


The Catalan government  has said around 2.26 million people had cast a ballot in the banned referendum to leave Spain on Sunday and 90 percent of them had voted in favor of secession.
This represents a turnout of around 42.3 percent of Catalonia's 5.34 million voters. And this is without taking into account the hundreds of thousands of ballots that have been confiscated or weren't cast as hundreds of polling stations were closed by the Spanish authorities or the amount of voters beaten up. In fact despite of  repression it  seems to have driven people to the polls.. #CatalanReferendum



Thursday 28 September 2017

National Poetry Day: Still Hungry for Freedom


Nice project for National Poetry Day on I am not a silent poet https://iamnotasilentpoet.wordpress.com/
Send your poems here today: myriamwordmaker@gmail.com
An old poem from my pen :

Still Hungry for Freedom


So long as a human being thirsts for freedom...
and is shackled in a concrete cage
without charge under a policy universally condemned
called administrative detention
I will sound alarms.



and if my poetry drifts towards polemic
I will make no apology
with the absence of the unseen in mainstream news
I will spread their dreams and hopes.

So long as bulldozers
destroy peoples homes
and walls are built that divide and uproot
I will raise my voice.

and when peoples lands are stolen
daily from under their feet
I will not be cowed into silence.

When rules of law are twisted
that allow voices to be unheard
I will not feign blindness
pretend ignorance
I will try to be an echo.

and if some are allowed
to steal the richness
from peoples souls
I will stand up
and stamp my feet.
and will proudly raise my fist
proudly raise my fist.

https://iamnotasilentpoet.wordpress.com/2017/09/28/national-poetry-day-freedom-poems-part-2-hungry-for-freedom-by-dave-rendle/

Wednesday 27 September 2017

Banned Books Week and Poetry's Place


Banned Books Week is an annual event celebrating the freedom to read. Typically held during the last week of September, it serves to highlight free and open access to information.Every day across the globe, writers are being censored in a hundred different ways. Some face persecution, others are imprisoned, some have their work banned and some are subject to more insidious means of censorship. For some, such restrictions may seem sensible, while for others, they appear arbitrary at best, oppressive and dangerous at worst.
The list of books suppressed in the English language features the sacred and profane, poetic and pornographic, famous and infamous. A history of the censorship of literary texts is also a history of the authorities that have attempted to prevent their circulation: sovereigns, politicians, judges, prison officers, slaveholders, school governors, librarians, teachers, parents, students, editors and publishers.
Each year a host of events are held across the United States such as author readings in bookshops, libraries, and schools, as well as panel discussions and webinars.Banned Books Week was launched in 1982 in response to a sudden surge in the number of challenges to books in schools, bookstores and libraries in the US and designed to bring awareness to the number of books that face bans and censorship in the United States.Since then according to the American Library Association more than 11,000 books have been challenged.
We might expect that book bannings are a particularly American thing, but this year Banned Books Week is a bigger thing in the UK than it ever has been before, largely due to the involvement of the non-profit campaign Index for Censorship.https://www.indexoncensorship.org/
“Censorship isn’t something that happens far away,” says Jodie Ginsberg, the campaign’s CEO. “It has happened in the UK. In every library there are books that British citizens have been blocked from reading at various times. As citizens and literature lovers we must be constantly vigilant to guard against the erosion of our freedom to read.
“Index is excited to be joining the coalition as the first non-US member. We have been publishing work by censored writers from around the world for 45 years and – given all that is happening on the global political stage – it feels more important than ever to be highlighting censorship and demonstrating just what it means when books are banned.”
Charles Brownsein, chair of the Banned Books Week Coalition and executive director of the Comic Book Legal Defence Fund, which finances comic book creators and retailers court cases against censorship actions, is delighted that the primarily US event now has a foothold in the UK. He says, “We are very excited to have the Index on Censorship join the coalition. Their work not only aligns with our mission, but will bring an international perspective and awareness to our annual celebration of the freedom to read.”
Literature is usually banned because people with power do not approve. Words are dangerous because they can.inspire action. They can point to an injustice, breathe life into dormant issues, create a national feeling or hold people accountable. Call me a hypocrite and I make no apologies I've been known to throw Fascist propaganda in the bin, because I happen to think  recycling is very important too. Banned Books week has certainly giving me some needed food for thought though.
In 1644, poet John Milton famously wrote, “Censors rake through  the entrails of many an old good author, with a violation worse than any could be offered to his tomb.” The statement comes from Aeropagitica: A Speech for the Liberty of Unlicensed Printing to the Parliament of England, a spirited defense of free speech that he wrote in response to Parliament’s Licensing Order of 1643. Milton, who himself was the victim of censorship in his efforts to publish treatises defending divorce, published Aeropagitica in defiance of the same censorship law it argued against.
While Milton’s treatise was a response to an immediate threat to freedom of speech, the practice of censoring and banning literature both predates and postdates Milton’s defense — particularly as it relates to poetry.
A few decades later, poet, novelist, and playwright Oscar Wilde said, “There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.” Even later, poet Joseph Brodsky said, “There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them.”
While the history of censorship has become more visible in the last few years through campaigns like Banned Books Week, perhaps less noted or known within that history is how poets and poetry have been similarly challenged, censored, and banned.
In honor of Banned Books Week this year, here are some significant  poetry collections, poems, that have been challenged, censored, banned, and even burned throughout history as controversial works and some poets that continue to be silenced even today:-

Les Fleurs du mal (The Flowers of Evil) by Charles Baudelaire:

Banned in 1857 for eroticism, and, according to the judges, poems that “necessarily lead to the excitement of the senses




Mahmoud Darwish :


Though he was widely considered the Palestinian national poet, Mahmoud Darwish frequently faced controversy and censorship with his work. As a young man, Darwish faced house arrest and imprisonment for his activism. He later became increasingly involved in politics, openly criticizing Arab governments and Palestinian politicians. He lived in exile from Israel for twenty-six years, until he was able to return in 1996.
In 2000, Yossi Sarid, then the education minister of Israel, suggested including works by Darwish in the school curriculum. But right-wing members of President Ehud Barak’s government threatened to introduce a motion of no-confidence. Barak said Israel was “not ready” to teach Darwish in the schools. After Darwish had learned of the controversy, he said, “It is difficult to believe that the most militarily powerful country in the Middle East is threatened by a poem.”
The issue of Darwish’s censorship came up again in 2014, when his works were removed from a major book fair in Saudi Arabia for containing “blasphemous passages.”

https://teifidancer-teifidancer.blogspot.co.uk/2010/01/mahmoud-darwish-poet-of-resistance.html


Howl by Allen Ginsberg:

Challenged in a famous 1957 obscenity trial for its language and content about drug use and sexuality. On October 7, 1955, Ginsberg publicly read part of “Howl” for the first time at the Six Gallery in San Francisco, to the praise and acclaim of his fellow Beat writers. The following day, City Lights publisher and poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti sent Ginsberg a telegram
am asking for the manuscript of the poem. Anticipating a controversial release, before City Lights published the manuscript, Ferlinghetti asked the American Civil Liberties Union if it would defend the book in court if he were prosecuted.
Howl and Other Poems was then published on November 1, 1956, as part of the City Lights Pocket Poets Series. With its long, winding lines; profane language; and frank, racy content about drug use and sexuality, Howl was deemed obscene and Ferlinghetti was arrested and taken to court. Obscenity charges were dismissed after trial.



Amores (Loves) & Ars amatoria (Art of Love) by Ovid:

The Roman poet Ovid not only had his book, Ars Amatoria (The Art of Love) banned, but he himself was banished from Rome for writing it in the year 8 CE. Banned, challenged, and burned for sexual content.In 1497, Girolamo Savonarola, a Dominican monk living in Florence, Italy, began burning all objects he found immoral and corruptive in what would be called the Burning of the Vanities. All of Ovid’s works were included in the pyre.
Ovid’s works were challenged again a century later in Elizabethan England as Amores, elegiac poems in a set of three books that describe one of Ovid’s affairs, was proscribed in the 1599 Bishops’ Ban. Ordered by John Whitgift, the archbishop of Canterbury, and Richard Bancroft, the bishop of London, the Bishops’ Ban resulted into the cessation of the printing of questionable books and the destruction of existing copies of those texts. Christopher Marlowe’s translation of the Amores was included in the ban. U.S. Customs banned it in 1930 - nearly two thousand years after it had been written. This makes it a candidate, if not the winner, of the dubious distinction of being the longest (in time) banned book.



A Light in the Attic by Shel Silverstein:

Banned for encouraging bad behavior and addressing topics some deemed inappropriate for children.
This is one of several poems that led to the collection being banned because it was said to cause messiness and disobedience.

How Not to Have to Dry the Dishes

If you have to dry the dishes
(Such an awful boring chore)
If you have to dry the dishes
(‘Stead of going to the store)
If you have to dry the dishes
And you drop one on the floor
Maybe they won’t let you
Dry the dishes anymore

(Light in the Attic, Harper Collins, 1981)



First Folio by William Shakespeare:

Arguably the greatest writer in the English language, has been banned many times. His plays and his sonnets excite the greatest difficulty for teachers by alluding to sex in many ways; several plays banned for profane language, sexual content, violence, political implications, and more.


Dlatego żyjemy (That’s What We Live For) by Wislawa Szymborska:

Wislawa Szymborksa is considered one of the major modern Polish poets; she published several poetry collections and was awarded a Nobel Prize in literature in 1996. Szymborska spent much of her life in a Stalinist Poland, in which socialism was enforced upon Polish artists.In 1949 her first book, Dlatego żyjemy, was set for publication but was banned for being too preoccupied with the war and not loyal enough to the socialist regime




Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman:

Famously “banned in Boston” in 1882 for sexual content.Seminal to the history of American verse, Leaves of Grass, a frank and sensual celebration of America and the human body, would later be considered a classic that established Whitman as one of the originators of a uniquely American poetic voice

.https://teifidancer-teifidancer.blogspot.co.uk/2017/05/happy-birthday-walt-whitman-legendary.html



Ahmad Shamlu - Metals and Sense :

The Persian poet, also known by the surname Shamloo, or in his homeland as Ahmad Šāmlū,  occasionally used the pen name A. Bamdad when writing poetry or working as a journalist. Many critics consider him to be amongst the most influential poets in modern-day Iran.
Shamlou’s first collection of poetry was called Forgotten Songs and was published in 1947. It was a collection of modern and classical poetry and he followed this by making regular contributions to a literary periodical called Sokhan-no. A second collection appeared four years later called Manifesto and it was around this time that his socialist tendencies manifested themselves. He took on a job at the Hungarian embassy as cultural advisor.
Perhaps it was his growing notoriety in Persian society that caused his third collection of poetry – Metals and Sense in 1952 – to be first banned and then all copies confiscated and destroyed by the police. Things got a little easier for him during the next twenty years as he continued to write and publish his work although, in 1966, he found his literary magazine subject to a banning order by the Ministry of Information.
Shamlu left Iran in the 1970s as he was not in favour with the Shah’s regime. He moved to the United States and then to Britain for a time. The 1980s saw him living a secluded life while still writing regularly but this was interrupted when he was invited to do a lecture tour throughout Europe, and this was repeated in the early 1990s. Further tours of the United States and Canada established his name as one of the greatest figures in Iranian literature.


Lenore Kandal - The Love Book:

Lenore Kandel  hung out with Beat Poets and was  and was immortalized by Jack Kerouac In "Big Sur," Kerouac's 1962 novel, Ms. Kandel is portrayed as Romana Swartz, a "big Rumanian monster beauty.
She believed in communal living, anarchic street theater, belly dancing, and all things beautiful. She was one of the shining lights of San Francisco's famous counterculture of the '60s. Her book of poetry "The Love Book," published in 1966, was deemed pornographic and the famed Psychedelic shop
on Haight Street where it was sold was raided by the police. Copies were confiscated on the grounds that their display and sale "excited lewd thoughts" and the store's owners were arrested.
'The Love Book' was extremely graphic sexually," said Gerald Nicosia a Kerouac biographer and Beat generation chronicler. "She showed this openness to sexuality, this freedom of lifestyle. With 'The Love Book,' she became a cause celebre. But Lenore was a true lyric poet. Her language was as beautiful as anything being written."
Ms. Kandel wrote another book of poetry, "Word Alchemy," published in 1967. The same year, she was the only woman to speak onstage at the Human Be-In in Golden Gate Park. She  went from the Beat community to the Diggers, to being a major player at the Human Be-In, a very deep poet, who was committed to radical values and transforming culture.


D.H. Lawrence :

D. H. Lawrence was no stranger to censorship; his novels Lady Chatterley’s Lover and The Rainbow were censored and banned. However, many of Lawrence’s poems came under fire as well. His poems—such as “All of Us," a sequence of thirty-one war poems—attacked politicians and criticized World War I and imperial policy, but due to censorship  ultimately rendered the works unreadable to the extent that the full extent of his poetic talent has been overlooked.
Lawrence, who wrote poetry from 1905 until his death in 1930, struggled to get his poems into print, especially after the controversy surrounding his other published works of the time. It wasn’t until decades later that Lawrence’s works began to be published in their entirety.A new edition of Lawrence's poems, many rendered unreadable by the censor's pen, will reveal him as a brilliant war poet .


Federico Garcia Lorca :

Federico García Lorca is one of the most important Spanish poets and dramatists of the twentieth century, the author of such celebrated works as Romancero Gitano (The Gypsy Ballads), which was reprinted seven times during his lifetime. But his work was still the object of censorship in Spain in the early 1900s. Lorca was openly homosexual and known for his outspoken socialist views, and his works were deemed dangerous for their sexual content, language, and political underpinnings.
In 1936, Lorca was shot to death by Spanish nationalists due to his support of the deposed Republican government. Lorca’s work was burned in Granada’s Plaza del Carmen and banned from Francisco Franco’s Spain. His books remained censored until Franco’s death in 1975

.https://teifidancer-teifidancer.blogspot.co.uk/2015/08/frederico-garcia-lorca-561896-19836.html


Sappho :

The Greek poet Sappho lived on the island of Lesbos and is famously known for her poems of romantic longing and her affairs with other women. Though Plato referred to her as the “tenth muse,” her sexuality occasionally overshadowed her work, which was frequently viewed as obscene and objectionable. In 180 AD, the Assyrian ascetic Tatian decried Sappho as a “whorish woman, love-crazy, who sang about her own licentiousness.”
Before it was destroyed, the library of Alexandria housed nine collections of Sappho’s poems. But in 380 AD, Saint Gregory of Nazianzus, the bishop of Constantinople, ordered her work burned. Later, in 1073, Pope Gregory VII also ordered that her work be publicly burned. Most of her work was destroyed; only one complete poem survived—until the discovery of some more of her poem fragments by scholars in 1898.


Nazim Hikmet :

Considered Turkey’s greatest modern poet, acclaimed both nationally and internationally for his works, Nazim Hikmet was a Communist who was stripped of his citizenship for his political views. His work, which praised his country and the common man, was deemed “subversive” and banned in Turkey from 1938 to 1965.
Hikmet himself spent several years in Turkish prisons and in exile. He wrote many of his most popular poems during these times, such as his masterpiece Human Landscapes from My Country, which he wrote while imprisoned from 1938 to 1950.
Despite the controversy surrounding his works, Hikmet’s poems won the praise and support of artists from all over the world. Now Hikmet’s work is available in more than fifty languages, and he is praised as a major figure in modern poetry.


Gwendolyn Brooks :

Gwendolyn Brooks  was the first African American to win the Pulitzer Prize in poetry, wrote the very brief but pointed poem, We Real Cool, the Poem was banned  for the line “We jazz June” which was taken to be a metaphor for sex. “We Real Cool” (The Pool Players) is so brilliant that you could read it in essentially any time period in American history and it would still ring true.

We real cool . We
Left school. We

Lurk late. We
Strike straight. We

Sing sin. We
Thin gin. We

Jazz soon. We
Die soon.


Alexander Vvedensky :

Alexander Ivanovich Vvedensky  was a Russian poet and dramatist with formidable influence on "unofficial" and avant garde art during and after the times of the Soviet Union. Vvedensky is widely considered (among contemporary Russian writers and literary scholars) as one of the most original and important authors to write in Russian in the early Soviet period.
As members of OBERIU (a modified acronym for “Association of Real Art”), Alexander Vvedensky and his colleagues were hounded to their end for their “meaningless” and “irrational” literary work.
During the 1920s and 30s, the Soviet Union made it nearly impossible for OBERIU members to publish their poetry anywhere. As a result, most of Vvedensky’s writing vanished and the first edition of what did survive was not smuggled out of the U.S.S.R. until the early 1980s. Now, several decades Vvedensky’s death on a prison train in 1941, his story and the story of OBERIU has become a rallying cry of contemporary Russian dissidents like Pussy Riot.The writer, has garnered a new English-language audience since Pussy Riot's Nadezhda Tolokonnikova quoted Vvedensky at her trial in August 2012. Tolokonnikova compared Pussy Riot, arrested for an anti-Putin protest in a Moscow cathedral, with the dissident Soviet poets of the OBERIU group, whose deliberately incomprehensible work challenged and de-familiarized the death-dealing logic of the communist state. She quoted Vvedensky’s idea that “the inexplicable is our friend” and insisted: “Pussy Riot are the disciples and heirs of Vvedensky,” – like him, they pass judgement on the state, even as they are sentenced to imprisonment: “The dissidents and the poets of OBERIU are thought to be dead, but they are alive,” she asserted. “They are punished, but they do not die.”


Forugh Farrokhzad :

Iranian Farrokhzad, a controversial and modern poet who openly discussed her love life in her poems, was killed in a car accident in 1967 when she was 32 years old. She remains one of the most iFarrokhzad's poems were banned following the 1979 revolution. Later, some of her poems were republished. In her poems, Farrokhzad writes about the plight of women, her unease with the conventional style of life, and her relationships.

Some excerpts:

I am thinking that in a moment of neglect
I might fly from this silent prison,
laugh in the eyes of the man who is my jailer
and beside you begin life anew.

Life is perhaps lighting up a cigarette
in the narcotic repose between two love-makings
or the absent gaze of a passerby
who takes off his hat to another passerby
with a meaningless smile and a good morning.


Exiled Iranian poet Esmail Khoi has said that Farrokhzad, as a poet and as a woman, has "all the characteristics that the Iranian government hates."
"Farrokhzad is an intellectual woman, broad-minded, freedom loving, and brave, who expresses all her feelings as a woman. She can be and in my view has always been a model for other women. This is something that the Islamic republic cannot tolerate," Khoi said in an interview with the BBC.

http://www.forughfarrokhzad.org/papers/papers2.htm


Mohammed al-Ajami :

Mohammed al-Ajami, is a Qatari poet who was imprisoned between 2011 and 2016 for reciting a poem critical of Qatar’s ruling family. Prior to his arrest, he was a literature student at Cairo University. On 29 November 2012, he was sentenced to life imprisonment, a sentence commuted in March 2016 through royal pardon because of international pressure.



Fatima Naoot :

Egyptian poet, author and former Parliamentarian candidate Fatima Naoot  was chief editor of the literary magazine Qaws Qazah (The Rainbow) and a writer for The 7th Day newspaper. She has translated short stories by Virginia Woolf, a volume of American and English poetry and a volume of short stories by John Ravenscroft. From 2001 onwards she published four volumes of Arabic poetry. The manuscript of her fifth volume was rewarded with the first prize in the Arabic literature section of the Literary festival in Hong Kong in 2006. The translation of this volume in both Chinese and English appeared meanwhile with the title A Bottle of Glue.Naoot has attended many poetic festivals and committees in Middle East, Europe, and Latin America, and wrote weekly columns in newspapers in Egypt and the Middle East. Her poetry has been translated into languages including English, French, German, Italian, Dutch, Spanish, Chinese and Kurdish. She was recently sentenced to three years in jail by an Egyptian court for the crime of insulting Islam. Ms. Naoot was arrested
for writing  a Facebook post in which she criticized the mass slaughter of animals during the religious festival of Eid al-Adha. You can still see Ms. Naoot's Facebook page here.

Amanuel Asrat :

Eritrean journalist and poet, Amanuel Asrat has been incarcerated since September 23, 2001 in an undisclosed, maximum security prisons along with other journalists and former government officials who demanded reform. Amanuel (b 1971), a graduate of soil science and water conservation of University of Asmara, is greatly credited for Eritrea’s poetry resurgence of 2000s. An award-winning poet and critic, Amanuel (with two colleagues) has established grassroots literary clubs across the country. Amid the political crackdown and banning of the private newspapers, Amanuel was taken into custody in the morning of September 23, 2001. Apart from unauthorized rumors mainly through former prison guards who have fled the country, their whereabouts is unknown and there has never been an official statement by Eritrean authorities.
Amanuel Asrat is one of the few Eritrean writers who are assuming their proper places and due recognitions internationally mainly through PEN Eritrea’s advocacy campaign. He was profiled in August 2015 issue of The Guardian along other five Eritrean journalists; his poem was translated into 14 languages to mark International Translation Day; he held one of the empty chairs at the 81st PEN Congress in Quebec, Canada; and he was one of the five writers featured in 2015 on the Day of the Imprisoned Writer, an international day that recognizes writers who have suffered persecution as a result of exercising their right to freedom of expression. For International Translation Day on 30 September 2015, PEN members from around the world translated ኣበሳ ኲናት (The Scourge of War) into  many different languages.

ኣበሳ ኲናት (The Scourge of War)’

Where two brothers pass each other
Where two brothers meet each other
Where two brothers conjoin
In the piazza of life and death
In the gulf of calamity and cultivation
In the valley of fear and peace
Something resounded.
The ugliness of the thing of war
When its spring comes
When its ravaging echoes knock at your door
It is then that the scourge of war brews doom
But…
You serve it willy-nilly
Unwillingly you keep it company
Still, for it to mute how hard you pray!
– Translated by Tedros Abraham



Liu Xiaobo :

Poet Liu Xiaobo https://teifidancer-teifidancer.blogspot.co.uk/2017/07/chinas-nobel-laureate-dissident-leader.html was detained in 2008 before  he died of cancer while in custody at a hospital on July 13 aged 61. Beijing faced a global backlash for its treatment of Liu Xiaobo, who became the first Nobel Peace Prize winner to die in custody since German pacifist Carl von Ossietzky in 1938.A veteran of the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests, he was sentenced to 11 years in jail in 2009 for “subversion” after pushing for democratic reforms.Following his terminal cancer diagnosis, Liu had requested to receive treatment abroad  a wish that friends believe was in reality for his wife’s sake. But the authorities refused to let him go.
His death in custody triggered rage and frustration among the dissident community and an outpouring of grief in semi-autonomous Hong Kong, where pro-democracy forces must also contend with an increasingly assertive Beijing. Concerns for his widow Liu Xia also a poet are currently ongoing.

Dareen Tatour :

Finally this Palestinian poet  has spent over a year and half under house arrest for publishing a poem on her Facebook page. Since then, she has lost the ability to support herself. and cannot leave the house without a chaperone.
Tatour, 34, was arrested by Israeli police on October 11th, 2015 for a poem she had published on Facebook.The main clause of her indictment was based on a poem that she had allegedly posted on YouTube under the title: ” (Resist my people, resist them). She was charged with incitement to violence and identifying with a terrorist organization ,all because of her poem.
Since then, the state has been waging a legal battle, which has included bringing in a series of experts on both Arabic and Arabic poetry, in order to dissect the words of a young poet who was nearly anonymous until her arrest. Her trial, and the state’s attempts to turn a poem into an existential threat, has been nothing short of Kafkaesque.
‘Chains can imprison a poet physically, restrict his movements and impose house arrest, but they can’t restrict his thoughts, tongue, words and poems’.
These were her words when the Danish Carl Scharnberg Foundation,  in June 2017, awarded her a prize of  2000 euros  to support her fight for poetry, art and justice.
In the charges against Dareen for her poetry and expression, the indictment severely disregards her internationally recognized human right of expression. Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that “Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.” Article 19(1) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights states that “Everyone shall have the right to hold opinions without interference.” Article 19 (2) also states that: “Everyone shall have the right to freedom of expression; this right shall include freedom to seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds, regardless of frontiers, either orally, in writing or in print, in the form of art, or through any other media of his choice.” Although Freedom of Opinion and Expression is guaranteed under these international human rights conventions, the Israeli authorities continue to violate these internationally codified rights through the criminalization of Palestinian expression through social media outlets. The arrest and detention of Dareen and other Palestinians take place in the context of collective punishment, punitive measures and repression of Palestinians. Here is link to a previous post on the case and the poem concerned : https://teifidancer-teifidancer.blogspot.co.uk/2016/07/support-palestinian-poet-dareen-tatour.html


The Turkish government’s hostility to poems that challenge its official ideology is a long-held tradition in Turkey.The Turkish Republic was founded in 1923 and governed by the Republican People’s Party (CHP) until the first free national elections were held in 1950, as a result of which the Democrat Party (DP) came into power. Although both parties were rivals, they had a lot in common, such as their intolerance of dissent and free exchange of ideas.
When the issue of jailed or exiled poets in Turkey is discussed, one of the first that comes to one’s mind is  Nazım Hikmet (born 1902, Salonika, Ottoman Empire [now Thessaloníki, Greece]—died 1963, Moscow), who was one of the most influential figures in 20th century Turkish literature.

However, the history of Turkey is filled with many examples of banning poems, removing poetry books from the marketplace, and jailing poets, however, the history of Turkey is filled with many other examples of banning poems, removing poetry books from the marketplace, and jailing poets, prosecuted and persecuted for their literary work.
As you can see  poetry for a long time has been considered dangerous and subversive.The names mentioned previously could have been joined by many many others.
Bertolt Brecht, who not only lived through some of the ‘darkest times' of the last century but was also one of its greatest lyric poets. His poem, ‘To Those Born Later', written while Brecht was in exile from Nazi Germany in 1938, goes to the heart of the matter:

What kinds of times are they, when
A talk about trees is almost a crime
Because it implies silence about so many horrors?[4]


A year earlier Brecht wrote this poem, ‘In Dark Times':

They won't say: when the walnut tree shook in the wind
But: when the house painter crushed the workers.
They won't say: when the child skimmed a flat stone across the rapids
But: when the great wars were being prepared for.
They won't say: when the woman came into the room
But: when the great powers joined forces against the workers.
However, they won't say: the times were dark
Rather: why were their poets silent?[5]

What Brecht seems to be saying is that poetry is impossible in ‘dark times' because poetry addresses itself to issues which the dark times crush into irrelevance. But he also reminds us that silence is no option. Here is a link to his poem The Burning of the Books :

https://teifidancer-teifidancer.blogspot.co.uk/2010/10/bertolt-brecht-9translated-by-john.html


But  censorship of poetry never truly lasts. Whether it takes days, months, years or decades eventually a banned poem will be brought to light and its message heard again. But the importance of the issues surrounding banning books today remains, and is one about fundamental freedoms and civil liberties.
Writers are still regularly jailed in many countries for speaking their minds or daring to question orthodoxy. Freedom of speech is a rare and precious thing in the world today but writers are still paying the price for speaking out and using their voice. While in America the First Amendment protects freedom of expression as a basic right, it is nevertheless not enough to prevent ideas being challenged, books banned  on the grounds of difference in interpretation. In some countries  freedom of expression is still completely absent from social culture, the ability to access forbidden information becomes a dangerous necessity, made only possible today because of  advances in technology, giving banned writers a global outlet, and an invaluable resource to readers.
There will always be struggles over the proper limits to free speech, but banned books week might at least help draw attention to the issues involved and  broaden peoples understanding and awareness.
And serve to remind us of the power of words and those that seek to silence them. Yet when this free speech becomes unlimited, especially in this current fractured world there will always be those who seek to provoke an extreme reaction, this is also the dark side of humanity, that can veer towards hate. The danger is that tolerance and respect for our differences - and for each other - could actually tear us all apart. Left unchecked, hate speech can lead to war and genocide. Although the right to free speech is a fundamental value, it should not be allowed to outweigh the basic human rights of other people, especially their right to life.

Monday 25 September 2017

Animation for Tibet


Tibet is a country that has been living under China's brutal occupation for over 65 years,.Last year, Free Tibet commissioned major research into public understanding of Tibet. The results were sobering. Many are barely even aware that Tibet exists. It's time to change that.
Free Tibet https://www.freetibet.org/ is  currently raising money to fund a brand new animated short film about Tibet, in attempt to bring the Tibetan story to life, and capture the struggle and tenacious spirit of the Tibetan people.
Once completed, they  will use Free Tibet's international reach to get this video seen by millions of people; creating a whole new generation of Tibet supporters. Whatever my political allegiances my own feelings of solidarity remain with  those who are physically, economically and culturally brutalised  Like the Palestinians and the Kurds I support their daily struggle against brutal political repression and will side with those people that are  immediately oppressed. There  is simply no escaping the fact that China occupies Tibet in much the same way other regimes occupy lands that simply do not belong to them. China’s claims to have “liberated” Tibet continue to ring hollow, and the continuing Tibetan resistance represents an important call for self-determination'
However since the 2008 uprising in Tibet, the situation has been deteriorating with thousands of arrests, and the torture of Tibetans. It is evident that Chinese policies are hampering Tibetans who are driven to drastic acts of self immolation to resist China’s political repression and cultural assimilation. Here is a link to a crowdfunding page to help Free Tibet get their message out to a much wider audience, that these people are simply not forgotten. :-,
https://www.indiegogo.co people are not simpltm/projects/animation-for-tibet?mc_cid=c8ad5c5085&mc_eid=4bb4a1c634#/

Reflections on German election night

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As was widely expected, Angela Merkel was re-elected to a fourth term as German chancellor on Sunday , but I am currently very saddened and  repulsed by the shocking gains of  the far right, anti-immigrant party Alternative for Deutschland (AfD)  who won 13 percent of the vote which could see them securing 88 seats in the Bunbdestag. Which will be the first time chillingly that a far right, neo Nazi party has succeeded in getting into Germany's parliament in half a century. a really surprise result for a far-right party frequently accused of harboring Nazi revivalist ambitions. During the election campaign, the party's leading candidates said that Germans should show pride in its war veterans, including those who fought for Adolf Hitler's Third Reich  and claimed that terror is grounded in the Muslim religion.
The AfD  which was only founded in 2013 as a party against Germany's use of the 19-nation euro currency rather than the mark and the country's actions in bailing out Greece during the euro crisis. But the party quickly shifted to a nationalist, anti-immigration platform after Merkel's open-door policy was announced.This party's staunch anti-Islamic rhetoric seems to have appealed to pockets of voters who feared that at an influx of muslim refugees could shake the foundations of German society.
The vote has since  subsequently been celebrated by France's fascist Marie Le Pen ,"Bravo from our allies from AFd  for this historic score." she tweeted. It is a  a chilling reminder of the right wing, racist populism  that has won electoral success from France and Germany to Donald Trump's victory in the US.
Outside AfD's election party in Berlin after the results were announced thousands of protestors shouted "All Berlin hates the AfD" "Nazi pigs"  and other slogans. Major Jewish groups have also expressed dismay , with the World Jewish congress, calling the party " a disgraceful reactionary movement that recalls the worst of Germany's past."
Germany's  political situation  like the rest of the world , reveals a deeply disturbing  mirror of the times that we currently live in, I sincerely hope that the forces of anti-Semitism, fascism, racism and xenophobia will continue to be challenged and countered, wherever these  ugly ideas are revealed, this right wing extremism must not be allowed to grow,  must  not be allowed to triumph , as they fan the flames of fear, and must continually be resisted. Lets continue to show our humanity and promote and grant safe haven to people fleeing war and misery. Don't sit on the fence when fascism continues to rise.

Sunday 24 September 2017

Abstract



Thoughts are drunk on lemonade
the well is deep, as time drifts,
freedom to reminisce, words to spin
sorting and processing
musings whirl out the door,
another day breeches
dragging visions, as leaves fall,
the river is high, so am I
every layer has a different meaning,
I have no reason to be afraid
I have seen how light flickers,
from the eyes of springtime
the eyes of summer, the eyes of autumn
to the eyes of winter; laughter sizzling,
the ebb and flow of memory
richoceting from every direction,
revolving doors of feeling
trickling through skin and bone.


PICTURE by Keith Garrow.