Poems for Peace Highlights from Previous Years
Here are some of the poems, songs, stories and experiences that were shared around the world from past SICA Poems for Peace events and workshops. We look forward to adding images from your 2015 events! Keep us posted.
A Selection of Published Poems Read at Various Poems for Peace Events
With links to the poems and to their authors. Poems/poets followed by asterisks mean that poem or author just happened to be featured at multiple locations on Peace Day
Kindness* by Naomi Shihab Nye*
The Peace of Wild Things* by Wendell Barry
(Barry also received the Dayton Literary Peace Prize in August 2013)
Dulce Decorem Est* by Wilfred Owen
We Were Missing A Present*
by Mahmoud Darwish*
Because Even the Word Obstacle is an Obstacle by Alison Luterman
As Kingfishers Catch Fire
by Gerard Manley Hopkins
This is What You Shall Do by Walt Whitman
God Has Pity on Kindergarten Children
by Yehuda Amichai*
My Father's Dream by Sargon Boulos
A Cafe, with You with the Newspaper
by Mahmoud Darwish*
Departure of '82 by Sa'di Yusuf
A Speech for Anti-Draft Rally, D.C., March 22, 1980 by Denise Levertov
Beach Burial by Kenneth Slessor
On Being Asked for a War Poem by WB Yeats
Chess by Jorge Borges (trans. Kurt Heinzelman)
Wild Peace, Tourist, Not Like a Cypress, and First Rain on a Burned Car*, Poems of Spring in the Appalachian Mountains
by Yehuda Amichai*
The Wild Geese* by Wendell Berry*
Stand Ready by Kelly Fowler
Eve in the Morning by Michelene Wandor
Fundamentalism by Naomi Shihab Nye*
Prometheus Unbound by Percy Bysshe Shelley
The Peace of Wild Things* by Wendell Berry*
1914.IV The Dead by Rupert Brooke
The Summer Day, by Mary Oliver*
American Football, Reflections on the Gulf War by Harold Pinter
A Pushcart at the Curb (excerpt)
by John Dos Passos
The End and the Beginning
by Wislawa Szymborska trans: Joanna Trzeciak
Misnomer by Gaganan Mishra
Where the Battle Did Not Happen
by William Stafford
For My Grampa Sam on His 81st Birthday, by Jane Marla Robbins
And the Band Played Walzing Matilda
by Eric Bogle
NOTE: YOU CAN LISTEN TO THE FOLLOWING POEMS READ AT SEATTLE'S POEMS FOR PEACE EVENT HERE. Be sure to click on the numbers in parenthesis after each item to hear it.
Rant by Diane diPrima
Excerpt from The Bidden Fruit by Benjamin Boyce
Marching for Peace by Hadiyah Carlyle
The Undergrown Beast and A Mother’s Nightmare by Ibtihal Mahmoud
Notes on being a Gulf War Refugee and Target of Opportunity
Meena Rose
Dreaming of Mother Moon by Carol Edson (Blackbird)
Give War a Chance by Faiza Sultan
Motherwit (from Pig War & Other Songs of Cascadia) by Paul Nelson
Some Images from SICA Poems for Peace events in Previous Years
Roxanne Payne Reicheg, Actress,LA Creating Poems, Vancouver Michael Cooke, Actor, LA
Jane Marla Robbins, Poet/Educator, LA Rachel Kann, poet, LA Preparations, SICA Italy
Hadani Ditmars /Baraa Safaa Ali, Vancouver Sharing a poem , Italy Willam H Bassett, Actor, LA
Peace Day Celebration, Brazil SICA, Forcalquier, France Ivan Cozzi,Sworkshop, Roma, Italy
Poems for Peace honord: Austin, TX Poems for Peace on TV, Austin TX Reciting, Roma, Italy
Creating Poems for Peace, SICA Canada Themba Tana onMbira, Vancouver Reciting, SICA Italy, Roma
Sharing one's creation, France Richard Reicheg, Actor, LA Hadani Ditmars, Baraa Safaa Ali
Gail Wronsky; Poet, LA Hombeline, Forcalquier, France Discovering one is a Poet!, France
Liam Clancy sings Bogle's song, And the Band Played Walzing Matilda
It seems we sometimes wonder how "war" poems make their way into "peace" poem events. It may be that the lament of war — the lament for the loss of innocence and humanity that war provokes —reminds us once again of our obligation as human beings to work for peace.
Here is Liam Clancy singing Bogle's powerful song and poem that was read by Michael Cooke at the Los Angeles Poems for Peace event, "And the Band Played Walzing Matilda." The song was originally written to remember the 50,000 Australian soldiers who died in the Battle of Gallipoli against Turkish troops in World War I.
(As posted on You Tube in 2008)