Today I continue my journey of sharing the words of artists and writers speaking out against genocide. For no matter how the ICJ stops short in calling for a permanent ceasefire to hostilities on Gaza, we around the world know the truth of the matter. I share today the beautiful words and vision of Canada’s…
Category: Art
Poetry for the Peeps! Witnessing Genocide
Today’s blog continues to look at the atrocities being committed in Gaza and to join the world plea for a ceasefire now. There is no end to this inhumanity of pulverizing a people in real time and with the massive citizen and press presence on social media platforms, allowing us if we choose, to follow the absolute tragedy…
Return to the Same Moon
We enter the new year full of desires for a new and different world, a truly human world that honours our interconnectedness and “right relations” as Indigenous teachings put it. In this world, genocide would not exist because the power and powerlessness engendered by relations of exploitation, oppression, empire-building would not be the filters through which all…
Off with the Old Year! In with the New!
As we say goodbye to 2023, I feel compelled to say that witnessing genocide in real time has overshadowed so much and become one with the grief of the world.Since the management of the covid pandemic when blind obedience and global leadership let us down royally, to the current situation in which 2 countries hold…
Poetry for the Peeps! Sharing Spirit, Sharing Solidarity
Today’s post shares the amazing resilience of the Palestinian people and their supporters around the world. . Although I sometimes find myself turning away from the incessant slaughter by the Israeli and U.S. governments I remember that it is a privilege to do so and I turn back to the brave young journalists who bring…
Poetry for the Peeps! A Year to Remember
2023 has turned out to be a year to remember for all the wrong reasons. It has exposed the heartlessness at the centre of settler colonialism and empire. The inhumanity of the world’s leaders, the logic of capitalism and the global push to fascism are all so clearly spelled out for us. And the mainstream media has…
Poetry for the Peeps! Poems For Humanity
This week, before the celebration of the birth of Christ in Beit Layem in a week’s time, Israeli leaders and their U.S. handlers continue their vicious bombardment and genocide of Gaza and its people. It is with a heavy heart that we witness no mercy. From occupation to apartheid to genocide, settler colonialism seems to follow the…
International day of solidarity with the People of Palestine!
Today is the international day for solidarity with the Palestinian people, These are a people who have experienced expulsion and ethnic cleansing for 75 years now. They have been living in what even former U.S. president Jimmy Carter called an “apartheid state”. Diasporic Palestinians are in many countries across the globe and provide cheaper labour…
Poetry for the Peeps!
We are seeing the rise of the new era of capitalism in its decadence, that is, decline. The thrashing tail and head are swinging all of us on this globe from side to side, twisting reality, employing doublespeak, and criminalizing compassion. In the midst of this slaughter of civilians and children, with over 12000 dead…
Poetry for the Peeps! Palestine in Poetry
Watching the invisibilizing collusion of mass media and the Israeli state vis a vis the media blockade on Gaza shows us not only the weaponizing of the internet but of everything necessary for the maintenance of life. Add to that, the genocidal bombing under the cover of absent eyes. Peoples around the globe have called…
Poetry for the Peeps! Poets of Palestine and Elsewhere
I am speechless at what I have been witnessing. The haves and have-nots are no longer about accumulation of capita alone but, as in the times of slavery and conquest, about having humanity and being seen as human. In the face of such violence and dispossession, this poetry cries with her voice to be heard…
Poetry for the Peeps! Mahmoud Darwish
Earth Presses Against Us Earth is pressing against us, trapping us in the final passage.To pass through, we pull off our limbs.Earth is squeezing us. If only we were its wheat, we might die and yet live.If only it were our mother so that she might temper us with mercy.If only we were pictures of…
Poetry for the Peeps! Suheir Hammad
Palestine/USA I will notdance to your wardrum. I willnot lend my soul normy bones to your wardrum. I willnot dance to yourbeating. I know that beat.It is lifeless. I knowintimately that skinyou are hitting. Itwas alive oncehunted stolenstretched. I willnot dance to your drummedup war. I will not popspin beak for you. Iwill not hate…
Poetry for the Peeps! Silvio Rodriguez on Chile
This September 11 2023 marks 50 years since the terrible coup in Chile, replacing democratically elected progressive President Salvador Allende with CIA and ITT backed dictator General Pinochet. Assassinating Allende and torturing and killing hundreds and hundreds of other local activists, artists and social organizers, the new military government brought in the first Neo-liberal experiment…
Poetry for the Peeps! Roque Dalton
It’s a hot September day. Unseasonably so. Weather extremes are being felt more and more frequently, affecting millions and millions around the globe. Stewardship of the land and waters that sustain us has fallen by the wayside. Hunger is a global disgrace. And even poets– not economists or think- tanks, were able to pin-point the…
Ear to the Ground 