Come Together: Imagine Peace

This is a message I sent out to the poets from Come Together: Imagine Peace, but the invitation is open to anyone.

Poets,

It is a grave time in the Middle East, and I want to share my sympathies with everyone who is suffering over this violence--including the families of contributors to our anthology.

One of my brainstorms for how to share our work from COME TOGETHER and beyond was to invite you, the poets, to share a bit of the contexts which might illuminate the work for readers. Obviously, the work stands alone. But here's my argument:

First, a paragraph from BEHIND THE LINES for context:
"As we contribute to the poetics of the peace movement, we must actively become archivists of the movement itself. We need to save everything we write and make, documenting how the texts came into being, when and how they were employed, and how they might be used in the future. Since many books have almost no information about the ephemeral conditions of a poem's making, they create the impression that war resistance poetry comes out of an ahistorical pacifism that lacks pragmatism and melts at the first sign of manufactured imminent threats."

My invitation is to you 1) to write a few sentences/statement about the poem from the anthology, and whether you've shared it or used it (or other poems) in your peace work. And 2)to say something about what peace work they've been involved in, or peace communities to which they belong, etc.

I would like to highlight, as soon as possible, those poets involved in the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, to have those voices in this dark time illuminate some other ways of being. But everyone is invited.

We might be able to quote a bit from the poem as well.

If you're interested, please respond. Thanks, Phil Metres