Poetry & Poets in Rags blog
Someone ought to write a poem or a song about the different ways that political groups thirsting for power can silence a poet. This week we find out that Yemeni poet Waleed al-Rumaishi's tongue has been cut. This story is followed by the Chinese authorities, not only forbidding poet Liao Yiwu from attending Sydney Writers' festival, but forbidding him from allowing his works to be published outside China. Evidently, the rest of us are suppose to put up with such pea-brained censorship. Burma has poet Maung Maung Zeya incarcerated in Hsipaw prison, evidently doping him up and possibly torturing his as well, as they did his son in order to capture him. That's our fourth story. The third is about what one poet can do. Javier Sicilia is leading tens of thousands in protest in Mexico. And our Back Page, the eleventh article in News at Eleven, is about a judge who uses poetry writing to lessen the sentences of juvenile delinquents.
That covers only five of the dozens of articles in our three sections this week. Big poetry news around the globe is the 150th birthday of Rabindranath Tagore. Our sixth blog post is a clutch of four articles covering this event and the poet's life and works from different angles. The rest I'll leave to your discovery, and that includes all of Poetic Obituaries, and all of Great Regulars, which has links to some fabulous articles and remarkable poetry.
Big thanks to our new InterBoard Poetry Community judge Judith Fitzgerald. Her results for April are in. Congratulations to following poets and poetry boards on the winning poems:
First place: Motown Layover by E. Russell Smith of The Write Idea
Second place: Papa by Yolanda Calderon-Horn of The Writers Block
Third place: Advice to Self in Guise of Other by Fred Longworth of Wild Poetry Forum
Thanks for clicking in.
Yours,
Rus
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