
In 2003, poetsagainstthewar.org drew thousands of poems within days. In 2008, with no end in sight to the war in Iraq, activist poets gathered at Split This Rock Poetry Festival in Washington D.C. They came from across the country, a national network of writers for change, with readings by such poets as Sonia Sanchez, Patricia Smith, Martín Espada, Naomi Shihab Nye, and Carolyn Forché, among others - many of them contributers to this anthology.
As to the question of the taboo against social action writing or "political writing: some writers inhabit a privileged realm that leaves them free to reflect on the perfect hurricane or a new hummingbird's nest. Other writers' realities reflect on the aftermath of the hurricane. It is the need to privilege those alternate or non-mainstream realities now that compels us to name social action writing as a literary movement.
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