Taking Poetry to the Streets of Washington, D.C.

A Report from the September 24, 2005, Demonstration

Peace goes into the making of a poet as flour goes into the making of bread.

                      --Pablo Neruda

The poets would have made the Statesman Poet proud on September 24, literally carrying his words through the streets of Washington, D.C., in the largest peace demonstration since the start of the U.S. war in Iraq. D.C. Poets Against the War hosted a contingent of about 25 poets and friends, including E. Ethelbert Miller, Rei Berroa, Esther Iverem, Jane Shore, and many others from D.C., as well as Marilyn Hacker, Marie Ponsot, and Elizabeth Macklin from New York.

Our signs, featuring Neruda's line above and lines from poems in the anthology, D.C. Poets Against the War, were a huge hit with other demonstrators, who stopped us many times to take our picture.

The D.C. Chief of Police estimated the crowd at at least 100,000, probably more, and it sure felt that way – the streets throughout the area were mobbed with Americans exercising their right to dissent in all sorts of creative ways and we stood in the press of these marvelous bodies for close to an hour just waiting to march, inching along Constitution Avenue. When we finally busted onto 15th Street, the energy was infectious and the crowd came alive.

The next afternoon D.C. Poets Against the War hosted a poetry open mic at Busboys & Poets, a brand new restaurant/café/bookstore/ performance space in the U Street neighborhood. Over 20 poets from all over the country read their own work and the poems of others – poets from Montana, Indiana, Washington State, Washington, D.C., Ohio, South Africa, Philadelphia. The poet from Yakima, WA, brought a long tapestry from a poetry pole that lives in his garden and invited us all to contribute poems on pieces of muslin. An American living in South Korea read a poem dedicated to his daughter, a Marine in Iraq. A father-daughter team read poems from the D.C. Poets Against the War anthology.

We finished the afternoon with a screening of excerpts from two films made during the second inauguration in January of this year. One, A Cold Day in D.C., featured a DC PAW reading at Karibu Books in Prince George's Plaza on inauguration eve, with shots of poets Ester Iverem, Camille Dungy, and E. Ethelbert Miller reading, and interviews with Miller and DC PAW coordinator Sarah Browning. We plan a full screening when the film becomes available, in the next month.

Many thanks to all who made the weekend’s activities possible, especially Leah Harris, Esther Iverem, Melissa Tuckey, Mike Maggio, and Busboys & Poets.

Below you'll find the lines of poetry that were in the air on Saturday, keeping poetry in the public square.

Every soldier's grave a place

Too loud for sleep

   

    --E. Ethelbert Miller

 

…graveyards in Baghdad

blossoming like flowers in earthen blood.

 

     --Kenneth Carroll

 

…a poet is the gardener and the blight, poetry is beauty and dissent.

 

     --Scott Ecksel

 

 

Do you believe that you were born to go gently into this night?

 

     --Esther Iverem

 

The fate of humanity is up to you and me. Be revolutionary.

You won’t see it on TV

 

     --Shahid Buttar

 

 

Let your photos bear witness

And teach us to see

What is done by our kind.

 

     --Judith McCombs

 

We read our poems of resistance. We know

We will be marching forever…

 

     --Sarah Browning

 

 

Starfish are stiff with grief,

And the Holy Spirit sighs.

 

     --Carmen Lupton

 

 

To enter into war is to lose

 

     --David Brescia Weiler

 

 

I sleep in full solidarity with the targeted,

Who…somehow cradle a small light of hope.

 

    --Dan Vera

 

 

Democracy, too, can be painted

Like a Hollywood backdrop

 

     --Melissa Tuckey

 

 

George Bush drinking umbrella drinks,

Basket of snakes at his feet.

 

     --Melissa Tuckey