Poets Tell the Stories of Their Countries on NPR

From NPR:
Poets can play a unique role in a country's politics, culture and social movements. They act as innovators, visionaries and truth tellers.

Three poets from different cultures — Iraq, Puerto Rico and New York — talk about the role of poets and poetry in different places. The three are part of the Split This Rock Poetry Festival in Washington, DC.

Guests:

Quincy Troupe, poet and author, most recently of The Architecture of Language

Sinan Antoon, poet and assistant professor at New York University

Naomi Ayala, poet and writer

Audio and transcript at source

Split This Rock Poem-of-the-Week: Sinan Antoon

When I was torn by war

I took a brush
Immersed in death
And drew a window
On war’s wall
I opened it
Searching
For something
But
I saw another war
And a mother
Weaving a shroud
For the dead man
Still in her womb


Baghdad, 1990

- Sinan Antoon

From The Baghdad Blues (Harbor Mountain Press, 2007), used by permission.
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Sinan Antoon – poet, novelist, and translator – was born in Iraq and moved to the US after the 1991 Gulf War. His work, including Baghdad Blues and a novel, I`jaam: An Iraqi Rhapsody, has been widely published in Arabic and English. Antoon is an Assistant Professor at New York University.

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Antoon will be featured at Split This Rock Poetry Festival: Poems of Provocation & Witness, March 10-13, 2010, in Washington, DC. The festival will present readings, workshops, panel discussions, youth programming, film, activism – four days of creative transformation as we imagine a way forward, hone our community and activist skills, and celebrate the many ways that poetry can act as an agent for social change. For more information: info@splitthisrock.org. Split This Rock is co-sponsored by the Institute for Policy Studies, the country’s oldest multi-issue progressive think tank.

Please feel free to forward Split This Rock Poem-of-the-Week widely. We just ask you to include all of the information in this email, including this request. Thanks!

Split This Rock
http://www.splitthisrock.org/
info@splitthisrock.org
202-787-5210