Tag: 100 000 Poets (et al) for Change

Posted in 100,000 Poets, Musicians, Artists and Activists for Change, 100TPC, Event/s, Peace & Justice

TOMORROW WE GO GLOBAL: It’s Your Day to Shine!

Posted on by The Bardo Group Beguines

“One ought, every day at least, to hear a little song, read a good poem, see a fine picture, and, if it were possible, to speak a few reasonable words.” Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship

Tomorrow is our day to hear songs, read good poems, see satisfying videos, share art, and be moved to celebrate together and to foster peace, sustainability and social justice:

“One thing I learned from organizing 100 Thousand Poets for Change  [100tpc] this year is that change will certainly come. It just might come at the very last minute. Wow! People all around the world are signing up right now, like crazy! We have 700 actions so far! Keep it coming!” Michael Rothenberg, Cofounder of 100,000 Poets for Change on September 21, 2019.

To find an event near you go to 100tpc.org.

And . . . 

DON’T FORGET ABOUT THE BeZINE 100TPC VIRTUAL EVENT

Banner artwork courtesy of The Bardo Group Beguines team member, Corina Ravenscraft, (Dragonkatet [Dragon’s Dreams])
Don’t forget to share your work tomorrow at The BeZine virtual 100TPC.  A post will go up on The BeZine blog with complete and easy directions for participation. Michael Dickel and I will keep the event going for 24 hours at least. All you need is access to a computer. You don’t have to go anywhere to share, to read, and to be inspired.

See you there …

Posted in 100,000 Poets, Musicians, Artists and Activists for Change, 100TPC, General Interest

100TPC Read a Poem to a Child Compilation & Curriculum

Posted on by The Bardo Group Beguines

September 23rd – September 28th 2019

The compilation and curriculum are the result of a collaboration among 100,000 Poets for Change, Florida State University, and Reading Is Fundamental with selections from The John MacKay Shaw Childhood in Poetry Collection of Florida State University Libraries Special Collections and Archives.

Download the Poetry Compilation for Readers.pdf

Download the curriculum Simple ways to make poetry engaging 2.0  and the poetry workbook.

Freely accessible Sound Cloud playlist of 100TPC Read a Poem to a Child Initiative

Posted in 100,000 Poets, Musicians, Artists and Activists for Change, General Interest, Poems/Poetry

Freely Accessible Sound-Cloud Playlist for 100TPC Read a Poem to a Child Week Initiative, courtesy Michael Dickel and Randy Thomas

Posted on by The Bardo Group Beguines

READ A POEM TO A CHILD WEEK

Sep 23 at 12 PM – Sep 28 at 11 PM EDT

August 26, 2019: THANKS to Michael Dickel (Meta/ Phor(e) /Play) for putting together this post for us on behalf of The BeZine  and for his interview of Randy Thomas. This post was originally done for last year’s event, but the SoundCloud playlist is still up and has grown a bit. I’m posting it today to remind you of this charming resource. / Jamie Dedes

A SoundCloud playlist!

August 2018: Thanks to 100 Thousand Poets for Change co-founders Michael Rothenberg and Terri Carrion, and especially to our 100TPC friend, Voice-Over legend Randy Thomas, we have the honor of presenting a compilation of children’s poems read by master Voice Artists and created for the 100TPC community in support of the 100 Thousand Poets for Change Read A Poem To A Child initiative. / Michael Dickel

Randy Thomas and the other voice actors / voice over artists in the playlist (further down) volunteered their talent and time to Read a Poem to a Child!

Thomas started her career as a radio personality and DJ in New York, LA, Detroit, and Miami. She’s announced for the Oscars, Emmy Awards, Tony Awards, Entertainment Tonight, The Rock-n-Roll Hall of Fame Inductions, The Kennedy Center Honors, and much more. You likely have heard her announce:

“You’re watching Entertainment Tonight!”

or

“Live from Hollywood, it’s the Academy Awards!”

Voice Announcer Randy Thomas
Source

The BeZine asked Randy Thomas a couple of questions about how this came to be:

The BeZine: What inspired you to organize these wonderful readings by VO artists for Read a Poem for a Child?

Randy Thomas: I am always intrigued when invited to use my voice in a positive way that gives back to the community. My dear friend Michael Rothenberg, a world-renown poet told me about his effort to share a poem with a child during one specific week. He found interest from all over the world. It’s wonderful.

The BeZine: You have inspired a number of voice artists to contribute their voices—how did that happen?

Randy Thomas: The Facebook community of voice actors and friends that I have seemed to rally behind this idea. We all have our own audio booths to record quality audio in, and they are all being so generous with their time and Voice sharing these poems. I am proud to have played a small part in this beautiful effort.

You can hear the amazing results below, in the embedded SoundCloud playlist.

Please feel free to play these recordings
for children around the world!

These may be played right here from this post or go HERE.

Thank you Randy Thomas
and brilliant VO artists
for sharing your talent for the children!

All audio ©2018 by the individual Voice Artists.
Poetry copyright belongs to the poet
or other current copyright holder.
Post text ©2018 TheBeZine.com and 100TPC.org
Link-sharing of the SoundCloud playlist is allowed.
Link-sharing or credited re-blogging of this post is allowed.
Readings in the playlist are provided for free personal use,
not for commercial purposes or paid events.
The audio may not be recorded or redistributed in any form
other than a link to SoundCloud without permission of the voice artist(s).

Posted in 100TPC, The BeZine

REMINDERS: 100TPC Read a Poem to a Child Week; Calls for Submissions: “The BeZine” in Solidarity with the Global Youth Climate Strike

Posted on by The Bardo Group Beguines

This is a global event. Events scheduled for the “Read A Poem To A Child” initiative will take place from September 23th – 28th and will include readings in bookstores, schoolrooms, community centers, public parks and at private homes. Co-founder Terri Carrion explains that, “All you have to do is read a poem to a child in any setting that is convenient, and you can sign up on our website at http://100tpc.org/sign-up/”

IN SOLIDARITY WITH THE GLOBAL YOUTH CLIMATE STRIKE

CALLING YOUTH & ADULTS

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS of poems, feature articles, fiction, creative nonfiction, art and photography, music videos, documentary videos on climate change for The BeZine blog is open through September 10, 2019. In solidarity with the world’s youth, we’ll post work on Climate Change throughout September. Your original previously published work may be submitted as long as you own the copyright. NO simultaneous submissions.  Please note in your subject line: For the climate change blog. Email submissions to bardogroup@gmail.com. All honors to Contributing Editor Michael Dickel for coming up with this idea.

Posted in General Interest

Please Support 100,000 Poets (and friends) for Change

Posted on by Jamie Dedes

Let’s make sure we can keep on keeping on …

Cofounder Michael Rothenberg, is celebrating his birthday by asking for donations to 100 Thousand Poets for Change. He’s chosen this nonprofit…Continue Reading

$58 raised of $500 at the time of this posting.

100 Thousand Poets for Change
US 501(c)(3) Nonprofit Organization
Posted in General Interest

Zine related news, timeline and contacts

Posted on by The Bardo Group Beguines

“This is the power of gathering: it inspires us, delightfully, to be more hopeful, more joyful, more thoughtful – in a word, more alive.” Alice Waters, chef, author, food activist, and founder and owner of Chez Panisse in Berkeley, California

The header to this post is our new banner for the 2019 The BeZine 100,000 Poets and Others for Change. It was designed by Team Member Corina Ravenscraft (Dragon Dreams). I appreciate the color and the flowers, which to me imply hope. So onward we go.

We use the banner as a header for our discussion page on Facebook (a gathering place of sorts) which you are encouraged to join. Our goal there is not about sharing poetry or regurgitating the news. It’s largely about “best practices.”

2018/2019 NEWS & GUIDELINES FOR POSTING ON THE DISCUSSION PAGE: We’re especially interested in filling a gap by collecting info on practical initiatives – ideas for taking action – from anywhere in the world, “best practices” so to speak that foster peace, sustainability and social justice, especially those that might be picked up and implemented elsewhere. Examples from the past include the churches that open their parking lots at night to the homeless, the barber who uses his days off to give homeless people haircuts or the group that put out clothing for people to take if needed.

Rev. Terri Stewart

FOR WRITE-UPS ON SPIRITUAL PRACTICE for Beguine Again, sister site to the Zine,  message Terri Stewart on Facebook. We also have a FB page – The Bardo Group Beguines -where we provide Zine info, inspiration, notice of spiritual events of interest to seekers and links to work posted on beguineagain.com founded and managed by Terri.

PLEASE DO NOT POST POETRY ON THE DISCUSSION PAGE. There are plenty of poetry groups on FB. We’re unique and doing something different but we do offer other opportunities to share your poetry and creative work.

SUBMISSIONS to The BeZine of poetry, essays, short stories, creative nonfiction, music videos, and artwork for The BeZine – journal or blog – are considered via email only: bardogroup@gmail.com.

The BeZine is published quarterly. Here are the schedule, themes, submission deadlines and publication dates for the rest of this year and 2019.

December 2018 issue, Deadline November 10th, Theme: A Life of the Spirit

March 2019 issue, Deadline February 10th. Theme: Peace.

June 2019 issue, Deadline May 10th. Theme: Sustainability

September 2019 issue, Deadline August 10th, Theme: Human Rights/Social Justice

December 2019 issue: Deadline November 10th. Theme: A Life of the Spirit

SEPTEMBER 28, 2019, 100,000 POETS AND OTHERS FOR CHANGE, GLOBAL, 2019 and THE BeZINE 100,000 POETS AND OTHERS FOR CHANGE VIRTUAL EVENT

Michael Dickel

Facebook message me or email me at thepoetbyday@gmail.com if you have poetry news or essays on poetry to be considered for The Poet by Day. For submissions (poetry and short fiction or creative nonfiction) for consideration by Michael Dickel for Meta/Phor(e)/Play  you can message Michael on Facebook or contact him through his blog.

The Bardo Group Begines is a twelve-member core team of poets and writers, artists and musicians, philosophers and clerics providing comfort, inspiration and information via thebezine.com and beguineagain.com.  

The BeZine is an entirely volunteer effort and a peace and justice mission.

For those who are interested, our freshly updated submission guidelines are HERE.

– Jamie Dedes, Managing Editor

Posted in 100,000 Poets, Musicians, Artists and Activists for Change, Poems/Poetry

Thousands and Millions, a poem by John Anstie

Posted on by Jamie Dedes
This is our (The BeZine) new poster for 100TPC 2018. It was designed by Corina Ravenscraft (Dragon’s Dreams)

One hundred thousand
Poets for change,
so many voices and
carefully chosen words,
at times decay into a void
of the anechoic chamber.

Earthly Fathers praying
for the Establishment,
that sets our stage,
and casts our values
in concrete, steel,
plastic … and carbon.

Leaders of the World,
whose balance sheets and
logical, numerate intellect
measure only a notion
of success. What is that?
Temper your ambition.

For aren’t we just that,
a wealth of rich and
creative intelligence,
maybe the only hope
for our universe
to understand itself?

Heavenly Mothers ask us
why digitise and monetise
and worship at the alter
of the great god, Thworg,
when we are in the face of
richness beyond measure.

Escape to the stars, if you will,
but answers will be found not
in the vanity of space-time travel,
but here, with this unaided vision
they lie in the green and blue,
right before your disbelieving eyes.

Permit your heart to rule
even if only one day a week, when
the visceral, and the common sense
will sit above logic and intellect, and
that subliminal noise in our head
will slowly rise to the conscious.

Maybe, one day we’ll be
Seven Thousand Million
Poets for Change!
Our time will come. Atonement beckons.
It’s in the wind, this beating heart,
a movement beyond the gaze of mortals …

© 2017 John Anstie, All rights reserved.  You can visit John at My Poetry Library.

This is John’s tribute to the 100,000 Poets for Change – 100TPC 2017 – movement, which had its annual celebration on 30th September.

Posted in 100,000 Poets, Musicians, Artists and Activists for Change, 100TPC

Our virtual “live” 100,000 Poets (and friends) for change event …. The Countdown Begins now AND YOU’RE INVITED

Posted on by Jamie Dedes

Well, the Zine’s virtual “live” 100TPC Master of Ceremonies, Michael Dickel (Meta/ Phor(e) /Play), is doing the event from the Midwestern U.S. this year, not Israel, and I’m here in Northern California as back-up.

We have just a few hours to go before we begin The BeZine 100,000 Poets (and friends) for Change, 2017 (100TPC), our biggest event of The BeZine year.  Do join us and bring your reading glasses and your work suggestive of peace, sustainability and social justice. Michael will get us started and I’ll be on hand to help put a wrap on things. We’ll run at least 24 hours to make it convenient for you to participate no matter where in the world you live.

You may have missed some of these posts that will clarify what we’re doing, how we’re doing it, and how you can participate. Here are two posts that you’ll find helpful:

See you later at The BeZine blog!

Jamie Dedes
Managing Editor, The BeZine
on behalf of Michael and The Bardo Group Beguines

Posted in 100,000 Poets, Musicians, Artists and Activists for Change

WAGING THE PEACE: We’re Featured on the Official 100TPC site, a good place to visit

Posted on by Jamie Dedes

13626573_529074297282475_2494432385093980550_nWaging the Peace, driving productive conversation and connection: Michael Rothenberg, co-founder of 100,000 Poets for Change,  just sent us the link to The BeZine’s page on the official 100TPC site. Our thanks to Michael, for doing this and for all that he and Co-Founder Terri Carrion are doing. They both rock big time!

People if you want to organize a gathering it’s not too late to register at 100TPC. You can do something as simple as having a small intimate group around you kitchen table, share your poetry, art and music and plan for a larger more visible event next year. As Michael Dickel says, “May peace prevail.”

Don’t forget Terri Stewart’s gathering, 100,000 Peacemakers for Change, at her church in the Seattle area. Notable: I think thanks to Terri this may be the first church to officially take up the banner. Hooray!

In the spirit of peace, love and community and
on behalf of The Bardo Group Bequines,
Jamie

Posted in 100,000 Poets, Musicians, Artists and Activists for Change, Environment/Deep Ecology/Climate Change, justice, Priscilla Galasso, Writing

Tell Me: What IS Environmental Justice?

Posted on by scillagrace

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.  

— Priscilla Galasso and Steve Wiencek, editors

me & Steve

© 2016, prompt text and photograph, Priscilla Galasso and Steve Wiencek, All rights reserved.

RELATED:

Posted in 100,000 Poets, Musicians, Artists and Activists for Change, The BeZine

INVITATION …. and reminder

Posted on by Jamie Dedes
City Birds
City Birds

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.

Priscilla Galasso is the lead for the Zine in September.

Michael Dickel is 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.

More detail is included in: If We Were Rioting in 120 Countries, You’d See Us on the 6 P.M. news: We’re not, so here’s everything you need to know about 100TPC.

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

© photograph, Jamie Dedes

Posted in 100,000 Poets, Musicians, Artists and Activists for Change, General Interest, Peace & Justice, Poets/Writers

In Conversation: Poet/Musician Graffiti Bleu & Michael Rothenberg, co-founder of the global initiative, 100,000 Poets for Change

Posted on by Jamie Dedes

810919_RJ8dSr1y

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.”

– Jamie Dedes

© 2016, words, Jamie Dedes (The Poet by Day), All rights reserved; photograph courtesy of Graffiti Bleu and Michael Rothenberg.

Posted in 000 Poets, 100, General Interest, Musicians, Spiritual, Spiritual Practice, Terri Stewart, TheBeZine

Climate Care as Spiritual Practice

Posted on by The Bardo Group Beguines

Editorial Note:  With this piece by Terri Stewart (Cloaked Monk) we announce our focus for 100,000 Poets (and others) for Change 2016, environment and environmental justice. We continue our Facebook group discussion page. Let us know if you would like to be included in that.

Terri is also the lead for the upcoming November issue of The BeZine. The theme for that zine issue, which will publish on the 15th of November, is at-risk youth. 

******

Caring for all that is can be an overwhelming job! If I think of the things within my control and trying to do the best I can, maybe I can do it in bite-size chunks. After all, I will never be able to invent some magical thing that converts pollution to life-giving energy. But I can compost!

Call on the animals to teach you; the birds that sail through the air are not afraid to tell you the truth. Engage the earth in conversation; it’s happy to share what it knows. Even the fish of the sea are wise enough to explain it to you. In fact, which part of creation isn’t aware, which doesn’t know the Eternal’s hand has done this? His hand cradles the life of every creature on the face of the earth; His breath fills the nostrils of humans everywhere. Job 12:7-10, The Voice-A Storyteller’s Bible

.
Climate-care, earth-care, creation-care, creature-care, caring is a deeply spiritual practice. How we approach the other starts with our interior orientation. If we practice expansive spirituality, we will be filled with gratitude, mindfulness, and joy. If not, we will be led to a diminished experience.

I wonder how we could reconnect, simply, through ritual, to creation? Perhaps a mini-ritual?

1. Set your sacred space

What are you trying to connect to? Earth? Cosmos? Stars? Bunnies? Create an easy environment where you can let your gaze gently rest on a photo, object, or even the real thing!

2. Set your intention

What do you need at this moment? For example, “I am here to connect to the earth in a way that honors the createdness of us all.”

3. The body of the ritual

Combining your intention with a ritualized act. For example, if you were sitting outside on a lawn chair, offering honor to the cosmos during the day, you could gradually look around honoring each creation you see. “Blades of grass, I honor you. Cedar trees, I honor you. Beloved cat, I honor you!”

4. Closing ritual

A signifier that it is finished. Perhaps, if you were outside in the grass, you could bring a handful of grass seeds to add to the growth. Then you could sprinkle the grass seeds in all directions, offering life. 

Be creative! This framework for ritual was created by my friend, Deborah Globus. Her avatar is LaPadre. She’s awesome!

Shalom and Amen!

Terri Stewart

by Terri Stewart

© 2014, words and illustration, Terri Stewart, All rights reserved

terrisignoffblog

Posted in General Interest

A Chance for Peace …

Posted on by Jamie Dedes

DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER (1890-1969)

34TH PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES

In office 1953 -1961

“Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed … “ Dwight D. Eisenhower

Note: I wrote this piece on December 13, 2011 after I learned of the first 100,000 Poets for Change (100TPC). Seemed appropriate to pull it out, dust it off and share it once again since our theme for this year for 100TPC is “poverty.” 

The quote above is from Eisenhower’s speech, A Chance for Peace, delivered in 1953 three months after he took office and on the occasion of the death of Joseph Stalin, Premier of the Soviet Union (1941 to 1953). The “just peace” that the world hoped for in 1945 at the end of World War II had not materialized. While the Korean War was coming to a close, the Cold War-era military conflicts in Indochina (Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia) were slowly escalating. The United States would have advisory troops in Vietnam in 1954. The armed conflict in that region of the world would continue long past Eisenhower’s administration with U.S. involvement escalating in the 1960s and continuing until the Fall of Saigon in 1975.

Since the end of the Second World War and the Korean War, violent conflict continues unabated with thirteen wars (defined as 1,000 or more deaths per year) currently, including the War in Afghanistan and the Yemeni and Syrian uprisings of 2011. Smaller scale conflicts resulting in fewer than 1,000 deaths per year have been rife and in 2011 include the Sudan-SPLM-N conflict, the Yemeni al-Qaeda crackdown, and the 2011 clashes in Southern Sudan. (And now in 2015, we have to add among the world’s many current conflicts the war in Syria, which is displacing more people than any war since WWII. According to an recent and comprehensive article, How Syrians Are Dying (worth your attention) in The New York Times, 200,000 have been killed over the past four-and-a-half years.)

Genocides didn’t end either. We’ve had eight genocides since the Holocaust of WWII, including that which is ongoing in Palestine. The number of rebel groups is now over one-hundred, which probably errs on the light side. Conflicts rise from economic and social instability and what amounts to vigilante “justice,” most of which could be addressed if our governments invested in butter, not guns; if they included rather than marginalized; if they listened and responded rather than disenfranchised.

Even in 1953, Eisenhower pointed out that war isn’t sustainable:

This world in arms is not spending money alone.

It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.

The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities.

It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals.

It is some fifty miles of concrete pavement.

We pay for a single fighter plane with a half million bushels of wheat.

We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people.

If governments don’t recognize that Earth and her people cannot be sustained by war, many of their citizens do. One modern peaceful protest for a sustainable world is of interest to all of us who read, write, and love both poetry and peace. It is 100 Thousand Poets for Change, which held its first world-wide rally on September 24, 2011 with 700 events in 550 cities representing 95 participating countries united to support peaceful environmental, social, and political change.

Poets, writers, artists, musicians, and photographers the world over demonstrated in solidarity. The next global event is scheduled for September 29, 2012. Throughout the year small, local events are delivered at a various venues. By invitation, 100 Thousand Poets for Change was at the Sharjah (an Arab Emirate) International Book Fair, which ran through November 27.  Mujeeb Jaihoon reports,

“From time immemorial, poetry has built better bridges between people than those with bricks and stones. And these bridges do not get old or obsolete…” (Change Is Born in the Womb of Poetry)

In A Chance for Peace Eisenhower pointed out,

“No people on earth can be held, as a people, to be an enemy, for all humanity shares the common hunger for peace and fellowship and justice.”

We do hunger, individually and collectively. Perhaps our chance for peace starts with you and me. Poem on …

… and join us this year at The BeZine blog on 26 September 2015 and add your voice to ours for our (yours and mine) 100TPC, poets and friends virtual event for a peaceful, sustainable and just world.  

© 2011, essay, Jamie Dedes All rights reserved; The photograph of Eisenhower is in the public domain.

Posted in 100,000 Poets, Musicians, Artists and Activists for Change, General Interest, poem, poetry, Priscilla Galasso, TheBeZine

LET’S FACE IT! Peace, Sustainability and Justice … on 26 Sept. 2015, 100 Thousand Poets (et al) for Change

Posted on by scillagrace

cropped-11870868_10203410767264923_1515064565540882553_n1.jpg

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,

the coarse beard, the perfect make-up,

the injections, the implants,

the scars, the screen

There is a face, a viable being.

When eyes recognize

kin and skin, then peace begins.

Face to face is the starting place.

– Priscilla Galasso

©  2014, notes and poem, Priscilla Galasso, All rights reserved

Posted in 100,000 Poets, Musicians, Artists and Activists for Change, Artists and Activists for Change, General Interest, Poets/Writers

News: Second Light Network, “ARTEMISpoetry”, Fugitive Flags, and The BeZine’s 100,000 Poets for Change

Posted on by Jamie Dedes

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 …

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

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.

The poem of the month, Stones by Marion Tracy, is HERE.

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.

11990472_10153063200156615_706478127620772171_n

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.

Δ

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:

Δ

The BeZine‘s revised Submission Guildelines – including our schedule of themes through December of next year – is now available for view HERE.

Don’t forget to check for Writing Contests, Grant and Awards at Poets & Writers Magazine.  You’ll never know if you don’t try.

Thank you! Please feel free to reblog this post. 

– Jamie Dedes

Posted in 100,000 Poets, Musicians, Artists and Activists for Change, General Interest, justice, Michael Dickel, Peace & Justice, Poems/Poetry, Poets/Writers, Sustainability, The BeZine, Writing

100,000 Poets (and other artisits and friends) for Change, 2015: over 500 events scheduled around the globe

Posted on by Jamie Dedes

IMG_1250

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.