March 21st is a day which celebrates both the power of poetry and calls for the elimination of racism globally. Today’s post shares the words and pictures of poets and artists speaking to the need for justice and for poetry. As the great Salvadoran poet Roque Dalton said, “poetry, like bread, is for everyone.” Even…
Category: politcal artists
Poetry for the Peeps! Mahmoud Darwish
I’ve been aghast at the news of what is amounting to ethnic cleansing in Gaza and the repetition of the Catastrophe of 1948. I am saddened and enraged by the absence of a real international outcry. We truly live in a inhumane world. Some antidote to the despair I have been feeling is found in…
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! 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…
Learning to See: The Art of Oswaldo Guayasamin
I’ve been inspired lately by the paintings of Oswaldo Guayasamin. Although he is well-respected in Latin America, I rarely see the type of eulogizing that over him that is so common with Frida Kahlo, whose identity as a mature and political artist has been submerged in a depoliticized portraitist school of thought that is…
Ear to the Ground 