Hi Geraldine

My feeling is that any publicity that can be garnered for anti-war
protest is good.  Especially here, where we are dominated by the
Murdoch press.  I have just done a whiparound here and got a kind of
Who's Who of Australian poets giving poems to give to the PM today,
and poetry has even made it to the news pages (and it's not about
poets fighting). A surprisingly large number of the poems avoid the
usual traps  (they're in the process of being uploaded to
http://www.poetsunion.com ) and reflect that broader view of creation
in the face of destruction.  I haven't counted but I think they
outnumber the agitprop.

I haven't thought for months that this war can be stopped, although
it can be slowed down...  It's clearly a foregone conclusion and has
been for months, maybe years.  I think we're in this for the long
haul.  The next question is what kind of world we're going to be
living in soon.  Personally I think the only real hope is American
dissent.  Go, you Americans!

My daughter's off to a peace march for school children today.  I was
quite taken aback when she asked for a permission note to go... but
it's all happening everywhere.

Fwiw, here are the answers I gave a journalist who's writing about
the PAW for an article to be in the Melbourne Age on Sunday - I hope
- excuse the journalese, I hope at least some of them get quoted -

Cheers

A

>1) What can an event such as this achieve?

By itself, it obviously can't achieve much.  I don't think anyone
who's contributed a poem seriously thinks their poem is going to
change the world.  In the context of the much wider Australia-wide
and world-wide movement for peace, it may achieve a great deal.   It
is part of exercising our freedom to speak, as citizens in a
democratic society.

>2) What power does a poet have in times of war?

Poetry is not about power, and never has been.  Yet in times of war,
poets have often come to the fore: as spokespeople for those who
suffer, as political polemicists, as fighters for freedom and
justice.  Paul Eluard's poem "Liberation" was air dropped to soldiers
in the Second World War.  Pablo Neruda and Garcia Lorca wrote
passionate poems against the Fascist forces in Spain in the 1930s:
and Lorca was shot for it.  Poets all over the world are imprisoned
by repressive governments for exercising precisely the rights
Australian poets are exercising now - and they are imprisoned because
the authorities fear the free expression of complex truths.  And yet
a poet's only real power is to express the feelings which others
might feel and be unable to say.

>3) And following from that, what would you say to those who would regard
>poetry as irrelevant to the ''real'' world of politics and power?

I don't agree.  Poetry, rather, is concerned that the "unreal" world
of politics and power forgets certain important things about human
beings, and most often to its own detriment.  I believe that is
happening now.  Poetry is a place where these realities can be
remembered and affirmed.

>4) What's your reaction to the language of President Bush in invoking God's
>will in relation to America's foreign policy?

It makes me very frightened.  Simple "truths", no matter what their
source, always make me frightened.

>5) Can a poem be heard over the sound of a missile falling?

No.

>6) Do you think John Howard will notice?

I think he will notice.  What notice he then takes is up to him.

>7) Do you think John Howard reads poetry?

I think it would be good for him if he did.
--


Alison Croggon
Editor
Masthead Online
http://au.geocities.com/masthead_2/

Home page
http://www.users.bigpond.com/acroggon/