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Ali Znaidis (Tunisia)
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From his poem "O, Wind!": "O, wind! You cannot break me / because I'm always full of vim. / O, wind! Don't even think that you / can break my boughs from limb to limb!"
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Sridala Swami (India)
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From her poem "Redacted Poetry is a Message in a Bottle": "The end of the book does not come as it usually does, when the last page is turned. It comes when what remains are the unusable words."
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Liao Yiwu (China)
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From his poem "Massacre": "We have no home. / Everybody knows. / Chinese people have no home. / Home is a comforting desire. / Let us die in this desire. / OPEN FIRE, BLAST AWAY, FIRE! / Let us die in freedom."
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Unsanctioned Writing from the Middle East
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Nowhere Near a Damn Rainbow: Unsanctioned Writing from the Middle East is an anthology of work from the poetry collective known as the Poeticians. This feature highlights writers from the Middle East, including: Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Dubai, Beirut, and Jordan.
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Chuck Kinder (United States)
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From his poem ,"Sometimes Poets": "Poets are capable of kicking / Some serious ass. Poets have quick hands / Soft or not / Poets fight dirty. Poets gouge eyes and kick / Their opponents in the balls / Or teeth / If given half the chance / Poets don't go down easily"
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TJ Dema (Botswana)
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From her spoken poem, "Neon Poem": "Poems are bullshit unless they teach. And they serve absolutely no purpose unless they reach someone."
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Patricia Smith (United States)
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From her poem "An Open Letter to Joseph Peter Naras, Take 2": "Who hates me for actually knowing this? There are hundreds / of songs written about all the things you can't do at sixteen. / There are a million songs written about what I didn't do with you."
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Lucas Hirsch (Netherlands)
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From his poem "No. 22": "Can you starve in a city of millions / without anybody noticing? / Today I met somebody / who was licking his finger / I can't remember him."
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Carmen Tafolla (United States)
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From her poem "Ocupando Mi Voz": "But oh the dance of liberation sprouted from our very core / From every line our history bloomed / The power of words to re-define our lives"
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Toi Derricotte (United States)
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From her unpublished poem "A Memory": "and you had a smelly thing under your pillow—sachet— / but it wasn't sexy—the way some women want to smell good to seduce. / It was something like flowers or dusting powder or the smell of a forest in a light rain."
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Soheil Najm (Iraq)
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From his unpublished poem "Black Paradise" - "I said write down: / The fire licks the horizon / and in the palm a slaughtered moon / then write down: / No difference between two kinds of death, / this desert is a snake, / and your wings are snipped."
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Meena Kandasamy (India)
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From her poem "Traitress": "Taken to task, they told the world she was sharp-clawed, / long-nosed, big-buddha-eared, pot-bellied, cross-eyed, / with a potato-peeler voice, and a neck that grew at night."
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Khin Aung Aye (Burma)
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From his poem "Achilles' Heel": "A poem I slept with a night too late, / What I've been imbibing for four/five years, / All have come into being just now."
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Cornelius Eady (United States)
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From his poem "Why Do So Few Blacks Study Creative Writing?": "And she has to know, if all music / Begins equal, why this poem of hers / Needed a passport, a glossary,"
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The Academy of American Poets initiated National Poetry Month in April of 1996 to “increase the visibility and availability of poetry in popular culture while acknowledging and celebrating poetry’s ability to sustain itself in the many places where it is practiced and appreciated.”
Throughout the years, Sampsonia Way has highlighted the work of various poets in all forms – published, unpublished, and performed. As a conclusion to National Poetry Month, we bring you a collection of those works from some of the poets who have contributed to both the pages and stages of Sampsonia Way.
These poets hail from a wide range of locations including Burma, Tunisia, India, the Netherlands, Botswana, and more. We are pleased to bring them all together today for this virtual celebration of poetry’s art and heritage, and its important role in the development of free speech and expression. Click on any image to read the full poem.
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