{"id":127,"date":"2014-02-07T17:13:10","date_gmt":"2014-02-07T17:13:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/centreforcreativewriting\/?p=127"},"modified":"2014-02-17T18:38:43","modified_gmt":"2014-02-17T18:38:43","slug":"spring-reading-series-in-protest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/centreforcreativewriting\/spring-reading-series-in-protest\/","title":{"rendered":"Spring Reading Series: In Protest"},"content":{"rendered":"

Another packed room for Wednesday\u2019s reading, and a subtle shift in demographic. Alongside students, staff and alumni of the School of English: law students, social scientists and human rights activists. What had they come to witness? The radicalising power of poetry.<\/p>\n

\"editor<\/a>

editor and poets gathering; familiar School of English faces await the reading<\/p><\/div>\n

As every Creative Writing undergrad at Kent will know, poetry is potentially dangerous. It can expose, persuade, exploit. It makes the reader see the world differently. It can shake things up. Here was an audience keen to see the process at work. In Protest: 150 poems for human rights<\/i> <\/strong>is a new anthology produced by the University of London’s Human Rights Consortium and Keats House Poets. The evening\u2019s readers were contributors to the anthology, an experiment, according to one of its editors Laila Sumpton, born of modest aspirations. Putting out a call for poems of exile and protest \u2018to create a pamphlet\u2019, the editors were overwhelmed by more than 600 poems. The resulting publication was launched in October last year and features work from established and emerging poets. Sumpton explained how the book – divided into themes such as \u2018land\u2019, \u2018sentenced\u2019 and \u2018expression\u2019 – seeks to \u2018rethink the frame of human rights poetry\u2019 and \u2018find new directions and ways in\u2019 to the subject.<\/p>\n

First to read was Alia’ Afif Kawalit, a PhD research student at Kent and tutor in the School of English. An Arab and English speaker, Kawalit\u2019s poem \u2018Turning a Blind Eye\u2019 explored the discrepancies between media reports of violent clashes close to her homeland, Jordan.<\/p>\n

\"Rooney<\/a>

Rooney and Kawalit beneath T.S. Eliot’s youthful gaze<\/p><\/div>\n

Sharing a mango with an Indian friend, notions of hospitality are set against the poet\u2019s fears for the future. Imported fruit, like imported journalism, can lose its authentic taste. In \u2018Dry Times\u2019, the Arab upheavals (Kawalit shuns the term \u2018Arab Spring\u2019, another appropriation) crash into consciousness, where \u2018little dreams wake\u2026like whistling bullets\u2019.<\/p>\n

These were subtle poems whose power lay in expressive imagery rather than tub-thumping remonstration. Hubert Moore followed with poems of contrast, stating that poetry alone can present unlikely associations to its readers \u2018with a straight face\u2019. His poem \u2018At the Approach of Dieback\u2019 brought together diseased ash trees and the \u2018slippered voice\u2019 of a refugee\u2019s aging parent speaking from afar. Similarly, \u2018V Formation\u2019 linked the image of a flock of flying geese with the \u2018eleven locked doors\u2019 between the poet \u2018and the detainees\u2019.<\/p>\n

Kate Adams, an East Kent poet and Kent Refugee Help volunteer, brought personal and professional experiences to the reading. Her poem \u2018Five Broken Cameras\u2019, written following the death of a friend and fellow caseworker, set \u2018sleet on the streets\u2019 of Britain against \u2018blood in the dust\u2019 of Palestine. \u2018Maybe the Rain\u2019, another poem drenched in relentless island weather, spoke in broken English to mirror, as Adams put it, \u2018the fractured, fragmented world of the refugee experience\u2019. \u00a0Speaking directly from this experience was former detainee Ruhul, who Adams first met in the Dover centre. Ruhul shared a single, highly personal work written while in detention. A poem of apology and separation, the poet addressed his children with a string of \u2018I\u2019m sorry that\u2019s, a reminder of some of the less publicised consequences of detention.<\/p>\n

Last to read was the School\u2019s Professor Caroline Rooney, an arts activist whose self-proclaimed \u2018soap-box poems\u2019 presented sharp images of war and protest. These are, said Rooney, \u2018poems that won\u2019t stay on the page\u2019. Here were lines which – as dangerous poetry should – climbed in to the audience and slapped them around. We were drily warned that \u2018stapling the mouths, not feeding them\u2019 does not make good government. Bombed-out buildings lay open \u2018like abstract paintings\u2019. Here were the specifics of attack, the sim cards saved in shoes, the eggs thrown at embassy buildings, the flotilla of aid ships raided en route to Gaza.<\/p>\n

\"the<\/a>

the debate continues<\/p><\/div>\n

Can poems be a force for social change, a tool for campaigning? Kawalit and Rooney cited the orphic quality of poetry, its authentic voice and its transformative power.\u00a0 Adams and Moore spoke of raising awareness and reaching those otherwise \u2018cold\u2019 to the issues. The debate continued beyond the reading, but Ruhul summed it up: voices shout and journalists create headlines, but \u2018a book is always there\u2019.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

In Protest<\/i>:\u00a0150 poems for human rights<\/i> is published by the Institute of Commonwealth Studies.<\/p>\n

Next in the series<\/strong>, an eclectic evening with writers Maria McCarthy, Maggie Harris and Maggie Drury. Wednesday 12th<\/sup> February, 6pm.<\/strong><\/p>\n

See you there.<\/b><\/p>\n

Sonia<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Another packed room for Wednesday\u2019s reading, and a subtle shift in demographic. Alongside students, staff and alumni of the School of English: law students, social scientists and human rights activists. What had they come to witness? The radicalising power of poetry. As every Creative Writing undergrad at Kent will know, poetry is potentially dangerous. It […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":38085,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[49756,49757,21640,49732,49755,49754,49758,8814,49759,49760,1225,49739,48708,49737,48315,49725,46589,49727,74,49726],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/centreforcreativewriting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/127"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/centreforcreativewriting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/centreforcreativewriting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/centreforcreativewriting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/38085"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/centreforcreativewriting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=127"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/centreforcreativewriting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/127\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":135,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/centreforcreativewriting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/127\/revisions\/135"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/centreforcreativewriting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=127"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/centreforcreativewriting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=127"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/centreforcreativewriting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=127"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}