The BeZine is currently open for submissions for the September 15 issue (September 10, submission deadline) that will focus on Environmental Justice, which is also the theme of our 100 Thousand Poets (and friends*) for Change virtual event on September 24. In order to propel the discussion into deeper focus from the outset, we invite and encourage contributing authors to ponder a few things about their perspective and their voice on this topic.
When we talk about Justice, it is sometimes assumed that people will agree on what is ‘the right thing to do’. However, as with anything else, our decision-making about Justice is influenced by our values, by the things that we deem ‘special’, ‘important’, or ‘sacred’. I propose that there are (at least) three categories of valued environments, or ‘Holy Ground’: Nature, Place and Community. Think about these three different arenas and how you see Justice being applied to them.
For example, if Community is your value, you may feel that Environmental Justice has to do with how people are impacted and how human activity creates change. If Place is your value, then questions about Justice probably will involve a particular area with borders of a physical or conceptual nature. It may be that feelings of injustice are felt in terms of ‘This, not That’ or ‘Us, not Them’ or in a desire to see a Place resist change. If Nature is your value, then you may see Justice in more fluid terms as the balance of resources between producers/consumers and prey/predator is in a state of constant flux with perhaps no ultimate goal.
So, as you sit down to write about Environmental Justice in your unique voice, identify your values. Perhaps use the lenses of Nature, Place and Community to focus. What is important to you? Why? How does it affect your decision-making? What factors impact this ‘sacred’ ground? How do different cultural models or systems impact your cherished home? What feelings arise in you – what empathy for Living Things or Living Habitats? What fears?
Thank you for spending time with these concepts and these questions. Your presence, your life energy, and your embodiment of love is a gift that we are privileged and honored to receive. Please, share your thoughts, your words and pictures with us!
What started as a poets’ event in 2011 now includes artists, photographers, musicians, drummers, mimes, dancers, arts lovers and other peacemakers. Neither the September issue of The BeZine nor the 100,000 Poets for Change (100TPC) virtual event to be held here on September 24 are restricted to poetry. Send Zine submissions to bardogroup@gmail.com no later than September 10. For the 100TPC event, work can be shared in the comments section and via Mister Linkey. Michael Dickel, 100TPC Master of Ceremonies, will provide direction for sharing in his blog post on the 24th. All work will be archived here and at Standford University. Feel free also to post comments, work in progress and questions in the comments section here today.
As an offshoot of 100,000 Poets for Change (100TPC), this event is organized by The Bardo Group Beguines‘ Rev. Terri Stewart (Beguine Again and The BeZine) at Riverton Park United Methodist Church, 3118 S 140th Street, Tukwilia, Washington 98168 on Saturday, September 24th, 1 p.m. – 3 p.m. with a social gathering from 3 p.m. – 4 p.m. Terri will lead a peacemaking circle that will focus on earth justice. She says, “We want to make a public witness of peace and peace for the earth. Hope to see you there!”
Rev. Terri Stewart, Associate Pastor at Riverton Park United Methodist Church, Canoness at The Bardo Group Beguines, Director at Youth-Chaplaincy-Coalition
The Peacemaking Circle will focus on ecological justice by following the tradition of the Tagish and Tlingit First Nation people of the Yukon Territories as taught to me by Saroeum Phoung.
“The principles of Peacemaking Circles are embodied in the talking piece. A talking piece holds the power of both talking and listening. It gives everyone an equal say as it relentlessly passes from person to person in a clockwise manner.
“Circles intentionally create a sacred space that lifts barriers between people, opening fresh possibilities for connection, collaboration and mutual understanding. The process works because it brings people together in a way that allows them to see one another as human beings and to talk about what matters.
“We will be utilizing the method of a talking circle that allows different voices to come together to explore a particular topic, the environment, from many different perspectives. This allows a diversity of voices, thoughts, and ideas to surface.” Terri Stewart
That same afternoon there will also be a food drive in process at Riverton for the Tukewila Pantry Emergency Food Bank and donations of food or money are welcome. Here is the wish list if you are able to help:
Remember, wherever you are in the world, go to 100TPC to find an event in your area or to register to hold one and no matter where you are, you can also participate in The BeZine’s 100TPC virtual event.
Of note: Michael Rothenberg, cofounder of the global peace initiative, 100TPC, announced yesterday that 500 events are now registered.
Here today is an invitation/reminder to join us – The Bardo Group Bequines – at The BeZine for 100,000 Poets (and other artists and friends) for Change (100TPC): on September 15th for the Zine and on September 24th for the 100TPC virtual event, which is celebrated from our blog. The themes for both are Environment and Environmental Justice.
Michael Dickelis the Master of Ceremonies for our 100TPC virtual event.
These are worthy efforts to:
help steer public discourse in a productive direction,
define issues and suggest possible solutions,
encourage consensus for the environmental and social good, and
connect people and raise the general consciousness.
Please do participate. All work will be archived on site and at Stanford University.
Zine submissions should be sent to bardogroup@gmail.com. Please read submission guidelines first. The deadline is September 10th.
Reader participation on the 24th for the virtual event is by way of the comments section or Mister Linkey. Michael will provide direction in his blog-post that day.
Also of note, Michael Rothenberg, cofounder of the 100TPC global initiative, reminds everyone today that it is not too late to register as an organizer of an event. While ours is a virtual event, people all over the world in 120 countries to date are sponsoring events in homes, schools, places of worship, cafés and restaurants, parks, community centers and other sites where people gather. Link HERE to register.
By way of warm-up, this Wednesday and next, I’ll post prompts on The Poet by Day related to the themes.
In the Spirit of Peace, Love and Community
and on behalf of The Bardo Group Beguines, Jamie
Here’s the good news: There are thousands of peace-loving, peace-living artists who gather in solidarity in some 120 countries around the world each year on the fourth Saturday of September and who connect and continue to work and stay connected even after the main event is over. The main event is 100,000 Poets for Change (100TPC), which is in its sixth year.
If we were rioting in 120 countries, for sure you’d see us on CNN, but we bare witness to the desire for and possibility of peace and apparently that doesn’t qualify as news: won’t get the adrenalin going, won’t sell laundry soap, won’t create division among us so that the wealthy and powerful can use us for their own ends. The world in all its strife is left to learn about 100TPC through social media. So be it …
THE BACK STORY:
I wasn’t there at the beginning, but I imagine that 100 Thousand Poets for Change founders, Michael Rothenberg and Terri Carrion (both of Big Bridge Press), were having dinner one night – maybe with some other poets and some artists and musicians – contemplating the state of the world, the disconnection among communities and nations and trying to think of some way to connect positively, to come together in the service of shared ideals such as harmony, stewardship and compassion. And so it happened that in 2011, Michael put out a call on Facebook for 100,000 Poets for Change and a movement was born. If memory serves there were 700 events held simultaneously around the world that first September.
The first night of the 100TPC World Conference in Salerno, Italy in 2015. Over 80 poets from 22 countries and 6 continents came together to share and to plan for the future of 100TPC
Michael and Terri recently stated that peace and sustainability …
. . . are major concerns worldwide and the guiding principles for this global event. All participants hope, through their actions and events, to seize and redirect the political and social dialogue of the day and turn the narrative of civilization towards peace and sustainability. We are living in a world where it isn’t just one issue that needs to be addressed. A common ground is built through this global compilation of local stories, which is how we create a true narrative for discourse to inform the future . . .
“What kind of change are we talking about? The first order of change is for poets, writers, musicians, artists, anybody, to actually get together to create and perform, educate and demonstrate, simultaneously, with other communities around the world. This will change how we see our local community and the global community. We have all become incredibly alienated in recent years. We hardly know our neighbors down the street let alone our creative allies who live and share our concerns in other countries. We need to feel this kind of global solidarity.”
What started as a poets’ event now includes artists, photographers, musicians, drummers, mimes, dancers, arts lovers and other peacemakers.
Michael Rothenberg and Terri Carrion created a website where anyone who wanted to organize an event could register. It is to this site that you may go to register an event or to find an event in your area. If you want to organize an event and it sounds rather onerous to you, keep in mind that while an event might be big and attended by many in a park or town square, it might also be a small gathering of like-minded artists at your home or a local cafe. I organized The BeZine 100TPC virtual event because I am largely home bound and assume there are others out there like me who would like to participate in 100TPC but would find it difficult to spend the day out. This virtual event also gives people anywhere a place to participant in 100TPC if there is no event scheduled in their vicinity. So just use your imagination and be creative about this. You might dedicate a book club meeting to it or an afternoon at church. This year, Terri Stewart (Beguine Again and The BeZine) has organized a peacemaking circle to be held at her church in Seattle. Bravo!
Organizers generally make flyers for their events. These are often small works of art. Depending on religious or national holidays, in some countries the events are held on days other than the fourth Saturday of September. In other countries – Morocco is one – events are held monthly. The main consistency is spirit and shared vision.
THE BeZINE 100,000 POETS FOR CHANGE, virtual event
The BeZine 100,000 Poets for Change will start on September 15th with our September issue. Priscilla Galasso (scillagrace) is the lead for that issue. The theme is Environment and Environmental Justice, which is our chosen theme for 100TPC 2016. If you’d like to submit work on topic for that issue, send it to bardogroup@gmail.com. Please review submission guidelines first.
Our 100TPC event is hosted from our blog. The post will go up at 12 a.m. PST on September 24 and you can begin including work immediately using either the comments section or Mister Linkey. Direction will be included in the content of the post. American-Israeli Michael Dickel (Fragments of Michael Dickel) is the Master of Ceremonies again this year. He does a fabulous job of it and will keep the action and commentary running via the comments section. You are encouraged to share your own work and to read the work of others. I’ll be on hand to give Michael breaks and to keep the dialog going until midnight PST – California. Ultimately all work shared is archived on site and at Standford University. Please keep in mind, that this is not just for poetry. You can share appropriately themed fiction, music video, creative nonfiction – whatever can be shared in a comment. Long pieces can be shared by putting in the url link to your work on your blog or website.
To help get you going, we’ll do 100TPC writing prompts at The Poet by Day (on Wednesdays, August 23 and August 31, so that you can begin working on something for September 24. Comments will be open for sharing and you what you share doesn’t have to be poetry. It can be flash fiction, creative nonfiction – even a video, photograph or piece of art if you want to share it in advance.
100,000 PEACEMAKERS FOR CHANGE, Seattle, WA
This event is organized by The Bardo Group Beguines‘ Rev. Terri Stewart (Beguine Again and The BeZine) at Riverton Park United Methodist Church, 3118 S 140th Street, Tukwilia, Washington 98168 on Saturday, September 24th, 1 p.m. – 3 p.m. with a social gathering after from 3 p.m. – 4 p.m. Terri will lead a peacemaking circle that will focus on earth justice. She says, “We want to make a public witness of peace and peace for the earth. Hope to see you there!” The Facebook Page for this event is HERE.
That same afternoon there will also be a food drive in process at Riverton for the Tukewila Pantry Emergency Food Bank and donations of food or money are welcome. Here is the wish list if you are able to help:
Remember, wherever you are in the world, go to 100TPC to find an event in your area or to register to hold one and no matter where you are, you can also participate in The BeZine’s 100TPC virtual event.
You can listen to the two-hour podcast HERE.Recommended! This post is meant as an alert and also to share my two cents.
As I write, it’s just a few hours after listening to Just My Thoughts with Graffiti Bleu on BlogTalk Radio. The show started with an exploration of What does the revolution look like? with Graffiti Blue, Michael Rothenberg, and the show’s panel and callers comprised of poets involved in 100,000 Poets for Change (100TPC).
Harkening back to Gil Scott-Heron and his poem, The Revolution Will Not Be Televised, part of the discussion was on technology and social networking and their roles in fostering peace, social justice and sustainability. When Heron wrote his poem in 1971, the means to formulate and distribute information and opinion were dominated by mainstream media and corporate interest, which were not in sympathy with the revolution Heron envisioned. Those interests are still dominant and still lack sympathy, but there’s something of a balance occurring – however imperfect – now that we plain folk have access to the tools of technology and social networking. Without social networking, we wouldn’t have 100TPC, which can happily be said to have gone viral since Michael Rothenberg put out a call on Facebook for poets to join in a global peace effort back in 2010. While each of us in the “100,000” has a relatively small “audience” together we touch many, many minds and hearts. We do have an agenda, but it doesn’t foment strife. We’re not in anyone’s pocket. That’s clean power. It’s power to …
On a personal level, one benefit of technology is that people who are homebound – as I sometimes am – can take part in change-making initiatives more actively than simply writing letters-to-the-editor or to our legislators, which is not to say we should give that up. I started a virtual 100TPC via The BeZine and with The Bardo Group Beguines so that disabled people and people who do not live near a 100TPC event would have the opportunity to have their say, to lend their support. Our 2015 commemorative page is HERE.
We need to do more than “talk.” Agreed. And I think that one of things 100TPC gives us is hope … huge hope from seeing that there are people in every nook-and-cranny of the world who share our values and priorities. This helps us to keep on keeping on with our local grassroots initiatives as well as our broader advocacy. This serves to sustain our faith and commitment.
Ultimately for me, 100TPC is about breaking down barriers, crossing boarders. It leads the way in our evolutionary journey toward a sustainable peace. In the documentary film Ten Questions for the Dalai Lama, the Dalai Lama says “we need more festivals.” In other words, if we get to know people, if we break bread with them or share a bowl of rice, we are less likely to think of them as “other.” It will be more difficult to turn around the next day and do harm. 100TPC is our festival. Once we’ve shared hearts, souls and stories through poetry, how can we marginalize anyone? How can we abandon or abuse?
Can the revolution be bloodless? The question is really “will it be?” I don’t think so. I don’t think revolutions are by their very nature “bloodless.” The psychopaths will always be with us and until we stop marginalizing people and leaving them desperate and vulnerable to tyrants, we’ll never have bloodless reform. We’ll never achieve a sustainable peace. Peace is a state that takes awareness and awareness takes growth, which is an evolutionary process. That doesn’t mean we should give up. It means that as poets we should continue to bear witness, to touch hearts, to raise consciousness and to nurture the process of growth. As poet Michael Dickel said in an interview on this site HERE: “. . . it may not be ours to see the work completed, but that does not free us from the responsibility to do the work.”
Editor’s Note: Priscilla Galasso (scillagrace, try to live gracefully) wrote this last year just before the 2014 event. (We’ve adapted it here with current links and dates.) It seemed a good piece to share with you today to welcome and encourage you to join with us this year on 26 September for 100TPC, which is not just for poets but includes artists, photographers, musicians and friends of the arts. 100TPC is about Peace, Sustainability and Justice. We chose “poverty” for our theme this year and have devoted the entire September issue of “The BeZine” to that subject.
On the 26th, a blog post will go up on this site with instructions on how you can share your work and view that of others. We look forward to your participation and to your works. J.D.
As a core team member of The Bardo Group, I am invited, encouraged, challenged to participate in the The BeZine’s 100 Thousand Poets for Change event to be celebrated virtually at this blog. For more information about this event, and to be stirred and prodded in you own artistic lethargy, click here.
I yearn to be a poet, an artist, a musician. I often find a piece that seems so right, so seemingly effortless, so fitting that I think it can’t be hard to craft a work like that…it simply lays over its theme like a glove. Not so. Listening to music on my way to work yesterday, I heard a poet’s frustration: “I don’t know why I spend my time / Writing songs I can’t believe / With words that tear and strain to rhyme.” (Paul Simon: Kathy’s Song.)
I feel these core values of Peace, Sustainability and Justice coursing through my life, my thoughts, my work, my hopes, and I wonder how hard it would be to write a poem about it. I talked to a young man half my age who has studied forensic justice and just interviewed for a position as a mentor, a parole partner, someone who will help perpetrators and victims get together and talk, face to face. I thought it was a great idea, for both parties, for all parties. Here’s my attempt to let that idea percolate:
Let’s Face It
Behind the veil, the dirty shroud, the black burka, the white Klan sheet,
the knit ski mask, the heavy gas mask, the transparent oxygen mask, the impenetrable death mask,
the dense fur, the redwood bark, the shiny scales, the matted feathers,
the protective shield, the official badge, the repeated slogan,
Editorial Note: The September issue of The BeZine will be out on the 15th and we’re all set for the big event on the 26th. Meanwhile …
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SECOND LIGHT LIVE: Everytime I visit Second Light Live, the website for Second Light Network of Women Poets (SLN), their biannual magazine (ARTEMISpoetry) and SLN’s two anthologies,Images of Women (Arrow Press and SLN, 2006) and Her Wings of Glass (SLN, 2014), there’s news . . . . Unlike a lot of news, it’s all good.
Check out SLN for poetry, classes (including remote), and poetry news. The network is for women. The poetry is for everyone.
I’ve read both anthologies, by the way. I enjoyed them immensely and go back to them frequently.
ARTEMISpoetry: The May 2015 issue of ARTEMISpoetry is still available for purchase. I’m just getting ready to submit my request for permission to post some poems from it and once I have that you’ll see a review go up here along with two or three poems from that issue. Meanwhile, poems and artwork for the May 2016 issue are due by 28 February 2016. Submission details are HERE.
Δ
FUGITIVE FLAGS: On 26 September, “100,000 Poets for Change” are celebrating their annual day of action, when poets all over the world call for social and political change. [That is for peace, sustainability and social justice.] On that day we ask literature institutions and writers to fly a white flag.
Why: We want to make a stand for a different treatment of refugees: for respecting their human rights.
When: 26 September, 4 p.m.
What Can You Do? Fly a white flag (e.g. made of napkins, bed linen, table-cloth, …) from your window or balcony. It should say “refugees welcome” and “100,000 Poets for Change.”
Please share this call for action.
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THE BeZINE’S 100TPC: Only seventeen more days to go for The BeZine‘s virtual event. The theme we chose this year is poverty. A post will go up on our blog and you are invited – encouraged – to link in your own relevant work. (How-to will be provided in the post.) We hope you will also read the work shared by others as well. Ultimately the links will be gathered into a commemorative Page on our site and also archived at 100TPC.
I hope you are all working on your poems, music videos, art and so on to link in with our virtual event that day.
If you are coming late to this announcement, here are some informational posts to check out:
As of this writing, there are well over 500 events scheduled around the world. To find an event near you or to register an event that you are organizing go to 100TPC.
Our own (Beguine Again and The Bardo Group) virtual event is scheduled to be held here at The BeZine blog on 26 September 2015. You are invited to join us by linking in your relevant work on poverty (our theme this year) through Mr. Linky (directions will be included in the post that day) or simply by adding your link or your work in the comments. You retain your own copyright. All the links and works will be collected and posted in a Page at The BeZine and also archived at 100TPC. Think about and prepare something you’d like to share so you can have your say and feature your own work.
To “meet” our host for that event, American-Israeli Poet Michael Dickel, link HERE.
These are busy days for Michael Rothenberg and Terri Carrion who founded 100,000 Poets for Change. Michael announced yesterday that 500 events are now scheduled for September 26, 2015, the fifth anniversary of this global initiative for change; that is, for peace and sustainability.
For those who are just catching up with us, 100 Thousand Poets for Change, or 100TPC, is an international grassroots educational organization focusing on the arts, especially poetry, music, and the literary arts. It was founded in 2011 by Michael Rothenberg and Terri Carrion and is centered on a world-wide event each September. This past June the first World Conference on 100TPC was held in Salerno, Italy.
There are also several offshoots cropping up: 100,000 Photographers for Change, 100,000 Drummers for Change … and so on. A little searching on Facebook and you’ll find them, though the umbrella for all, 100TPC, does include a range of artistic specialties and friends of the arts and is not limited to poets and poetry.
We – that is The Bardo Group and Beguine Again, publishers of The BeZine are hosting a virtual event and you are all invited to attend and add links to your own relevent work. The links will be collected and published in a Page on The BeZine site and also archived at 100TPC. Michael Dickel (Fragments of Michael Dickel) of The Bardo Group is the lead for this event. Michael is also the organizer of an event scheduled in Israel this October. You can contact him via his blog or message him on Facebook if you have an interest in participating there.
Meanwhile, here is an introduction to the visionary founders of 100TPC, Michael Rothenberg and Terri Carrion:
MICHAEL ROTHENBERG was born in Miami Beach, Florida in 1951, and has been living in the San Francisco Bay Area for the past 37 years. Currently Michael is living and creating among the redwoods.
Michael is co-founder of Shelldance Orchid Gardens in Pacifica, which is dedicated to the cultivation of orchids and bromeliads. He is a poet, painter, songwriter, and editor of Big Bridge Press and Big Bridge, a webzine of poetry and everything else.
In 2011 he and Terri Carrion co-founded the global poetry movement 100 Thousand Poets for Change. His songs have appeared in Hollywood Pictures’ Shadowhunter and Black Day, Blue Night, and most recently, TriStar Pictures’ Outside Ozona. Other songs have been recorded on CDs including: Bob Malone’s The Darkest Part of The Night (Caught Up in Christmas) and Bob Malone (Raydaddy’s Blues), Difficult Woman by Renee Geyer, Global Blues Deficit by Cody Palance, The Woodys by The Woodys, and Schell Game by Johnny Lee Schell.
Michael’s poetry books and broadsides are archived at the University of Francisco, and are held in the Special Collection libraries of Brown University, Claremont Colleges, University of Kansas, the New York Public Library, UC-Berkeley, UC-Davis, and UC-Santa Cruz.
His most recent collection of poems is Indefinite Detention: A Dog Story (Ekstasis Editions 2013) and Murder (Paper Press, 2013) My Youth As A Train published by Foothills Publishing in September 2010.
TERRI CARRION was conceived in Venezuela and born in New York to a Galician mother and Cuban father. She grew up in Los Angeles where she spent her youth skateboarding and slam-dancing.
Terri Carrion earned her MFA at Florida International University in Miami, where she taught Freshman English and Creative Writing, edited and designed the graduate literary magazine Gulfstream, taught poetry to High School docents at the Museum of Contemporary Art in North Miami and started a reading series at the local Luna Star Café. In her final semester at FIU, she was Program Director for the Study Abroad Program, Creative Writing in Dublin, Ireland.
Her poetry, fiction, non-fiction and photography has been published in many print magazines as well as online, including The Cream City Review, Hanging Loose, Pearl, Penumbra, Exquisite Corpse, Mangrove, Kick Ass Review, Jack, Mipoesia, Dead Drunk Dublin, and Physik Garden among others.
Her collaborative poem with Michael Rothenberg, Cartographic Anomaly was published in the anthology, Saints of Hysteria, A Half-Century of Collaborative American Poetry and her chapbook Lazy Tongue was published by D Press in the summer of 2007.
Terri’s most recent projects includes collaborating on a trilingual Galician Anthology, (from Galician to Spanish to English) and co-editing an online selection of the bi-lingual anthology of Venezuelan women writers, Profiles of Night, both to appear in late August, on BigBridge.org., for which she is assistant editor and art designer. Currently, she is learning how to play the accordion. Terri Carrion lives under the redwoods and above the Russian River in Guerneville, Ca. with her partner in crime Michael Rothenberg, and her dogs Chiqui and Ziggy.
On our 2015 Facebook Page for 100,000 Poets for Change, we’ve been discussing poverty and homelessness. I’m sharing some of the conversation there. If you’d like to join us on Facebook, please let us know. All are welcome. For the September 2015 issue of The BeZine, we’ll be exploring poverty and on September 26, we’ll hold our virtual event and we invite reader participation. Instructions will be in our blog that day. Links to everyone’s work will be collected and posted as a Page and also incorporated into a PDF that will be archived at 100,000 Poets (writers, artists, photographers, musicians and friends) for Change; i.e., peace and sustainability.
This conversation was started on our The BeZine 100TPC 2015 Facebook Group Page by Michael Dickel (Fragments of Michael Dickel):
It’s only a little more than a month until 100 Thousand Poets for Change—Fifth Anniversary—26 September! Time to start some provocations…
Just to get us thinking abou the Poverty Theme next month—this was posted in a FB group, “Philosophy,” a while back but just appeared in my timeline.
The question I have is, does the standing man reach into his pocket because of empathy? Does he see that the beggar could be him? Or is it narcissism, that he sees an extension of himself (rather than seeing the person himself as separate)? Is he only giving b/c it is another version of himself (white male)? Would he reach into his pocket if he saw the Other?
I don’t ask these questions to be cynical, but because I think the cartoon suggests all of this and possibly more. Who do we see when we see poverty? Who do we help? Who do we wonder why they are not “making something” of their lives (as one commenter on the posted photo said he would ask “himself”—the beggar self—in this situation)?
Jamie asked me to take the lead for the poverty-100TPC page, if I understood correctly, so consider this a first provocation. I hope to put out a couple of more in the next couple of weeks.
Are they prompts? Inspiration? Irritants? I like the idea of provoking thoughts, creativity, ideas. So I call them provocations. Mainly, just use what generates something for you, ignore the rest or all if you’ve got your own excitement rolling.
– Michael Dickel
Some of the discussion that resulted from Michael’s prompt follows:
“Would he reach into his pocket if he saw the Other?” Heartbreaking that we even have to ask. And we know the artist’s perspective, he is not seeing the other.” Terri Stewart (Beguine Again)
“I’d like to think in the spiritual sense he’s seeing himself but that is wishful thinking, eh? Jamie Dedes (The Poet by Day)
“The ‘but for the grace of God, go I’ response. Maybe. I was more cynical…I was seeing the ego. Ego demands giving to look good. Ugh. I’ve been doing justice work too long.” Terri Stewart
“I think the cartoon suggest all of this—the empathy of “there but for the Grace of God” likely the intent of the artist. The ego the reflection in the mirror, and possibly also intent? Who knows, I guess about intent… and that sense of I will help those like me. And what about those not like me? Terri Stewart
The drawing is provocative. And privileged. And as such, regardless of intent, draws attention to our own privilege, those like me anyway, white male, sitting at my expensive computer writing on FaceBook, drinking good coffee, and not worrying about where my next meal will come from, just whether I can afford to install central AC.” Michael Dickel
What are YOUR thoughts? Please feel free to share them below.
The August issue of The BeZine will be published online on August 15. The theme for August is music.
“Don’t forget September 26 is the 5th Anniversary of 100 Thousand Poets for Change! So far over 400 events are confirmed for that day. If you believe that poetry, music, and all of the arts are capable of making a more peaceful and sustainable world then 100 Thousand Poets for Change is for you! Contact me with your name, city, country and email if you would like to organize an event in your town to celebrate this important day. I will sign you up!”
Meanwhile, we have over seventy people united with us on our Facebook discussion page, The BeZine 100TPC, 2015. You are encouraged to join with us. Leave me a message in the comments area below if you want to be included. The more the better … we welcome diverse participation. This year we are addressing “poverty.”
For Discussion Here:
Audrey Hepburn (1929-1993), American Actress
I took this photo outside a church theater. It reminded me of Actress Audrey Hepburn’s service as a UNICEF ambassador. She traveled widely as she worked on behalf of the poor and the hungry. She said, “I don’t believe in collective guilt, but I do believe in collective responsibility.”Your thoughts????
The Plan:
The tentative plan: On the 15th of September we will publish The BeZine as usual. The theme is poverty. We are reviewing submissions now. Send them to bardogroup@gmail.com and put “poverty” in the subject line. Nothing over 1,000 words please and nothing that is unkind. Thank you!
On 26 September we will publish a blog post. Readers are invited to join with us by putting the links to their own relevant work in the comment section or to connect via Mr. Linky (directions will be provided). We encourage you to read everyone’s work and to comment. We will then collect everything into one Page and publish that on The Bardo Group site. Michael Rothenberg will include a PDF of the Page in 100TPC archives.
American-Israeli poet, writer and educator, Michael Dickel (War Surrounds Us) will take the lead for the September issue. Michael has hosted live 100TPC events in Israel for the past two years, has a third event scheduled for this October, and attended The First World Conference on the Future of 100TPC. You can read his article on that event: Salerno, il mio amore.
The next issue of The BeZine is scheduled for 15 August 2015. The theme is music. The July 2015 issue is up for your reading pleasure. The theme is imagination and the critical spirit. Link HERE.
Heads-up everyone: For the fifth year on September 26, 2015, more than 100,000 Poets (and artists, musicians, and other creatives and activist) will meet in town squares, theaters, on beaches, in cafes and probably some backyards in solidarity for a peaceful and sustainable world.
At The Bardo Group/Bequine Again, we’re hosting a virtual event so that those who have no neighborhood events to go to or who are home bound can participate.
At this writing founder Michael Ronthenberg, poet and publisher, reports that 300 events are already registered. To see if there’s an event near you or to register an event in your neighborhood, go to the site.
The following is a message from the founders of 100TPC:
100 THOUSAND POETS FOR CHANGE [100TPC] MOVEMENT for PEACE & SUSTAINABILITY!
Do you want to join other poets, musicians, and artists around the world in a demonstration/celebration to promote peace and sustainability and to call for serious social, environmental and political change?
“What kind of CHANGE are we talking about?”
The first order of change is for poets, writers, musicians, artists, activists to get together to create and perform, educate and demonstrate, simultaneously, with other communities around the world. This changes how we see our local community and the global community. We have become incredibly alienated in recent years. We hardly know our neighbors down the street let alone our creative allies who live and share our concerns in other countries. We need to feel this kind of global solidarity. It is empowering . . .
… and there is trouble in the world. Wars, violation of human rights, ecocide, racism, genocide, gender inequality, homelessness, the lack of affordable medical care, police brutality, religious persecution, poverty, censorship, animal cruelty, and the list goes on and on.
Transformation towards peace and a more sustainable world are the major concerns and the global guiding principle for 100 TPC events. War is not sustainable. There is an increasing sense that we need to move forward and stop moving backwards. But we are trying not to be dogmatic. We hope that together we can develop our ideas of the “change/transformation” we are looking for as a global community , and that each local community group will decide their own specific area of focus for change for their particular event. All we ask is that local communities organize events about change within the guidelines of peace and sustainability.
“I want to organize in my area. How do we begin to organize?”
100 Thousand Poets for Change will help organize and find individuals in each area who would like to organize their local event.
If you are an organizer for your community you will consider a location for the event and begin to contact people in your area who want to participate in the event. Participation means contacting the media, posting the event on the web, in calendars, newspapers, etc., reading poems, doing a concert, performing in general, supplying cupcakes and beer (it’s up to you), demonstrating, putting up an information table, inviting guest speakers, musicians, etc., organizing an art exhibit, and documenting the event (this is important, too), and cleaning up, of course.
Organizers and participants will create their own local event as an expression of who they are locally. Do they want a a concert or a jam session, candlelight vigil or a circus, a march or a dance, poetry reading in a cafe or on the subway, do they want absolute silence, a group meditation on a main street; it’s up to the local organization.
However, groups should try to hold some part of the event, if not all of it, outdoors, in public view (not required). The point is to be seen and heard, not just stay behind closed walls. It is also important that the event be documented. Photos, audio, videos, poems, journals, paintings! Documentation is crucial. The rest of the 100 Thousand Poets for Change want to hear what you have to say about change and enjoy your creativity too! The documentation will be shared through a blog/website that I will set up, a blog/website where groups can share and announce event information, as well as post photos, videos, poetry, art, and thoughts. But an event doesn’t have to involve tons of people. It can be just you (the organizer) and your pet, on a street corner, with a sign. Just let me know what you are planning!
Every effort counts!
Each local organization determines what it wants to focus on, something broad like, peace, sustainability, justice, equality, or more specific causes like Health Care, or Freedom of Speech, or local environmental or social concerns that need attention in your particular area right now, etc. Organizations will then come up with a mission statement/manifesto that describes who they are and what they think and care about. Mission statements form arround the world have been collected and worked together into a grand statement of 100 Thousand Poets for Change.
Over on The Bardo Group blog, we’ve just finished celebrating 100,000 Poets for Change (100TPC). The founders of 100TPC have invited our much valued community (The Bardo Groupand Beguine Again) to join in this event again next year. I’ve agreed to participate.
As many readers know, I’ve invited Terri Stewart to take the Bardo leadership role from me and to join our Bardo collaborative with her Beguine Again collaborative to create a powerful synergy for advocating nonviolence. We are moving in new directions. Hence, I don’t want to speak at this time for everyone else but I am personally committed to 100TPC.
Should the Group be unable to take part, I’ll host the event here at The Poet by Day for other poets who blog and for elders and disabled like me who are mostly home bound and cannot get out and pound the pavement for peace and sustainability.
SAVE THE DATE: 27 SEPTEMBER 2015 …
…and please pass the word
ABOUT
poets, musicians, and artists around the world in demonstration/celebration to promote peace and sustainability and to call for serious social, environmental and political change.
Here are some links of interest and some more info . . . MORE
in a darkened room peace sits silently waiting for sanity’s rise
This is the final post in our series on Peace and Justice, which we’ve presented as an virtual event for 100,000 Poets for Change. Please feel free to link in your own work. At least one of the team members will read and comment and the link will be included in a special commemorative page on this blog. You use Mister Linky below to add your work to ours or you may leave your link in the comments section. Thank you!
CHARLES W. MARTIN(Reading Between the Minds) — earned his Ph.D. in Speech and Language Pathology with an emphasis in statistics. Throughout Charlie’s career, he maintained a devotion to the arts (literature/poetry, the theater, music and photography). Since his retirement in 2010, he has turned his full attention to poetry and photography. He publishes a poem and a photographic art piece each day at Read Between the Minds, Poetry, Photograph and Random Thoughts of Life. He is noted as a poet of social conscience. Charlie has been blogging since January 31, 2010. He has self-published a book of poetry entitled The Hawk Chronicles and will soon publish another book called A Bea in Your Bonnet: First Sting, featuring the renown Aunt Bea. In The Hawk Chronicles, Charlie provides a personification of his resident hawk with poems and photos taken over a two-year period. The newly published When Spirits Touchrecently became available on Amazon.
The Bardo Group “100,000 Poets for Change” event page is HERE. Beginning 27 September (tomorrow), we’ll post work on Peace and Justice for one week as our participation. We invite others to link their own work to ours and, although the title is “poets” everyone (artists, activists, writers, musicians, bloggers) is welcome. Shortly after the event, we’ll collect your links into a page to create a commemorative collection like we did last year for Poets Against War.
More details are on The Bardo Group event page. Instruction on how to add your link will be provided on this blog within the text of each day’s post. We have designed our participation as a virtual event to accommodate bloggers and those who are homebound or otherwise unable to take to the streets. At least one core team member will visit your site if you link in and we hope that you will visit others as well.
Meanwhile, many of the wide variety of activities this event inspires will be livestreamed by event coordinators and participants. Please continue to check out 100 Thousand Poets for Change for videos and photographs from the world over and The Bardo Group blog for posts from our own collective.
An 2012 (year two) interview with founders Michael Rothberg and Terri Carrion.
The backstory on 100,000 Poets for Change brought to you courtesy of Wikipedia:
100 Thousand Poets for Change, or 100TPC, is an international grassroots educational organization focusing on the arts, especially poetry, music, and the literary arts. It was founded in 2011 by Michael Rothenberg and Terri Carrion, and focuses on a world-wide event each September.
HISTORY:100 Thousand Poets for Change was initially conceived by Michael Rothenberg and Terri Carrion in March, 2011, as a worldwide set of events to take place simultaneously on September 24, 2011. Literary event organizers volunteered to host associated events in their own cities or schools. On September 13, 2011, the city of Santa Rosa, California, declared September 24, 2011, to be “100 Thousand Poets for Change Day” and Stanford University offered to archive all documentation and audiovisual records of the event posted on the 100TPC web site.
Ultimately, 700 events in 550 cities in 95 countries took place on September 24 in conjunction with 100TPC, and the event was described as the largest poetry event in history. Considering the series of events to be a success, Rothenberg and co-founder Terri Carrion decided to pursue non-profit status for 100 Thousand Poets for Change and establish an annual event in September of each year.
STRUCTURE: 100TPC was founded in Guerneville, California, but most organizational tasks are done by individual organizers of local events. Event organizers in individual cities volunteer to create an event in association with 100TPC. The organization’s central office then publicizes the event through its web site, social media outlets, and conventional press releases. The relationship between most local organizers and the 100TPC headquarters remains informal, conducted primarily through e-mail. Organizers do not become officers or employees of 100TPC. Organizers can communicate with each other through the 100 TPC Organization & Communication Hub, a Facebook group available to 100TPC event organizers, where they are encouraged, but not required, to work together and to learn about each other’s events to help develop event ideas. Local organizers, then, have full control over the style and structure of their events—their only obligation is to register their event with the main 100TPC web site. Some events are free; others charge an entry fee and donate proceeds to charity.
Most 100TPC events take place in September. Each year, the central organizers pick a Saturday in September as “100 Thousand Poets for Change Day” and focus their publicity on that date. Some organizers choose to create 100TPC events at different points throughout the year.
The concept of “Change” in the name 100 Thousand Poets for Change refers to social change, but is otherwise broadly defined and dependent on the definitions of individual organizers or poets. 100TPC events do not necessarily share political or philosophical orientation. The 100TPC web site describes the “change” as having only to fall “within the guidelines of peace and sustainability.
With the help and support of talented bloggers and readers, I founded The Bardo Group because I feel that blogging offers a means to see one another in our simple humanity, as brothers and sisters and not as “other.” Effective October 4, 2014, I pass the administration of the blog to Terri Stewart (Beguine Again). Tthe Beguine Again collaborative and The Bardo Group are coordinating a consolidation of the two groups. I remain as poetry liaison and a member of the Core Team.
“Good work, like good talk or any other form of worthwhile human relationship, depends upon being able to assume an extended shared world.” Stefan Collini (b. 1947), English Literary Critic and Professor of English Literature at Cambridge
The Patchwork Scribble Factory back in the ’70s when we still used typewriters, typed manuscripts and submitted them by snail mail after making photocopies.
Writers, poets and other artists are often the change agents in a world that seeks the balance of reason to counter violence, injustice or stagnation.
On Saturday, 27 September, 100,000 Poets (and Writers, Musicians, Artists and Activists) will join in cities and towns around the world to explore and inspire positive changes for issues of human rights, poverty, hunger, climate, and peace-making. You can learn more about that effort and see what’s happening in your area by linking HERE.
The Bardo Group is hosting a virtual event as a vehicle to facilitate blogger participation and also for those who may not live near an off-line event or who may be homebound. Tomorrow, we are jump-starting our participation with our traditional Writers’ First Wednesday prompt. Novelist, poet and writing coach, Victoria C. Slotto will host Got Change? and you are invited to share your thoughts and work by linking in through Mister Linky or by leaving comments or links in the comment section.
Please join us on The Bardo Group blog tomorrow for Victoria’s Writers’ Fourth Wednesday.
Details on our virtual participation with 100,000 Poets for Change event are HERE.
With the help and support of talented bloggers and readers, I founded The Bardo Group because I feel that blogging offers a means to see one another in our simple humanity, as brothers and sisters and not as “other.” I am the poetry liaison and a member of the Core Team. Terri Stewart (Beguine Again) is in the lead position and the Beguine Again collaborative and The Bardo Group are coordinating a consolidation of the two groups.
“Good work, like good talk or any other form of worthwhile human relationship, depends upon being able to assume an extended shared world.” Stefan Collini (b. 1947), English Literary Critic and Professor of English Literature at Cambridge
The BeZine 