Last week I sat in on a Victoria Field workshop entitled Life's Alive!, looking at the dichotomy of the coming of spring at a time of such international turmoil. She spoke of the Seamus Heaney quote - "No lyric has ever stopped a tank" - but reminded us of the tremendous power poetry has to make us more fully ourselves, to prompt us to think, to question, to learn.
After the workshop I started to read some of the writings of Ilya Kaminsky, the deaf Ukrainian poet who now lives and writes in the States. He was a co-founder of Poets for Peace and his work has been a revelation to me. If you haven't read his poems - Gunshot, In a Time of Peace, so many more - do look them up now. They have so much to say to us.
And if you're free and in the area on Saturday, poets and musicians in Ledbury will be holding an all day event in The Barrett Browning Institute to raise money for the Disasters Emergency Committee Fund. I'm already committed to our own event here in Monmouth, but the Ledbury one features a Drop In Art Workshop, a Poetry Clinic, an open mic and a live performance evening. Here's to raising awareness and as much as we all can for such desperately needed assistance for millions of refugees.
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