Editor’s Note: In January of 2003, Laura Bush invited a number of poets to the White House for a symposium to celebrate “Poetry and the American Voice.” Peace activist, publisher and poet, Sam Hamill, declined. Hamill said that he “could not in good faith visit the White House following the news of George W. Bush’s plan for a unilateral ‘shock and awe’ attack on Iraq.” As an alternative, he asked about 50 poets to “reconstitute a Poets Against the War movement like the one organized to speak out against the war in Vietnam...to speak up for the conscience of our country and lend your names to our petition against this war.”
Poets would send him their works of protest that he would send along to the White House. When 1,500 poets responded within four days, the Poets Against the War website was created to aid with organizing the enormous, unexpected response. By March 1, 2003 more than 13,000 poems had been reviewed and posted by 25 volunteer editors. All of the poems on this website have been presented in person and by invitation to several representatives of Congress; many of them have since been introduced into the Congressional Record. Dozens of the poems were recently anthologized in a book, Poets Against the War, published by Nation Books.

The Poets Against the War website states that “although the attack wasn’t prevented, poets continue to speak out for a world in which non-violence and international cooperation will ultimately prevail over a single administration’s philosophy that the most horrendous crimes are justified in the service of foreign policy. Today it is more important than ever to lift our voices in support of respectful explorations of alternatives to war. Please join us. Organize a reading. Keep joining protests. Teach compassion. Participate…In all of America’s history, poets have never made such a difference.”

PA: One of the goals of PAW has been to solicit poetry. Is this strictly anti-war poetry? What was the response you received?

SH: We provided a place for poets to speak out; we helped organize hundreds of poetry readings around the world. We delivered to Congress 13,000 poems by nearly 12,000 poets against the war. There are now Poets Against the War organizations all around the world. The thousands of notes of gratitude were utterly astounding. [We solicit] strictly anti-war poetry for our web site – some good, some bad. There is also a poets for the war website, notable particularly for its doggerel.

PA: Some people, usually on the right politically, believe that poets, artists, writers, etc. just shouldn’t be involved in politics. Obviously you disagree. Why?

SH: Because the assertions from the right wing are the rantings of highly educated illiterates. From Sappho and Homer, from the ancient Chinese Poetry Classics to contemporaries like W. S. Merwin and Adrienne Rich and Hayden Carruth today, poetry has always had a socio-political element. Every poet is political, whether overtly or subtly.

PA: Some people regard poetry as a cultural arena that has the potential to make a big impact socially and politically. Is poetry still as capable of this as it was say in the time of Neruda or a Langston Hughes? Or does it too have to fight for social space and visibility?

SH: The US pays less attention to its poets than probably any other country in the world, and yet, all over the world poets are going to school on American (including all the Americas, but especially the USA) poetry, from Walt Whitman and Pablo Neruda to Ginsberg and Rich, et alia.

Poetry speaks to those who learn to listen closely. Those who listen closely tend to listen before they speak. Poetry subverts cliches and political claptrap by naming things and actions clearly. Mass media pays almost no attention to poetry, and yet there are more poetry readers in the USA than ever before, and more poetry being published.

PA: What do you feel are the most important things to come out of the PAW website? Has the anthology been a success? Are there plans for a second anthology? SH: We made poetry the focal point of a serious public discussion, and we made our country and the world aware of our concerns regarding the growing fascism of the Bush regime, and we established a network of poets around the world. The major anthology on the website is the largest single-theme anthology ever compiled, and it was done in a month.

But our work is not complete, and won’t be until we resolve the very issues that made the invasion of Iraq (and Afghanistan and all the other countries we’ve bombed since World War II – 39 at last count) possible.

Bush must go. The “Patriot Act” must be repealed. We face a constitutional crisis with a dishonest, unelected president: we can struggle to protect our democratic republic or we can slide into the bilge of fascism. We can return to the economics of the 19th century and obliterate the middle class or we can meet this challenge as nonviolent poets and teachers and ordinary citizens and demand revolutionary change.

PA: Your bio refers to your work teaching in prison. What was that experience like?

SH: I taught in western prisons for 14 years. It was a hard look at the underbelly of our justice system. I should write a book, but I haven’t time. But in prisons especially, poetry offers light in a vast darkness. Reading is the best road to freedom, whether behind bars or in the streets. Poetry can be a path to enlightenment.

PA: Copper Canyon Press, which has a sort of national “underground” reputation as a publisher only of poetry. How did you decide on such a risky venture? What was the motivation for it?

SH: I am a poet/editor/translator/printer, and I made a vow 35 years ago to spend my life in the service of poetry. The story of Copper Canyon Press can be found in The Gift of Tongues, a 25th anniversary anthology I edited. It’s a long story.

PA: Who are some of the poets Copper Canyon has published – well-known or more recent up-and-coming poets of our contemporary period?

SH: Well known: W. S. Merwin, Hayden Carruth, Carolyn Kizer, Jim Harrison, C. D. Wright, Ruth Stone, Greg Orr, Olga Broumas, Marvin Bell, Pablo Neruda, Cesare Pavese, Odysseus Elytis, Rabindranath Tagore. Comers: Joseph Stroud, Rebecca Seiferle, Arthur Sze, Eleanor Wilner.

PA: You have edited volumes of poetry by Kenneth Rexroth and Thomas McGrath – poets whose work was often consciously progressively political. Why did you choose those authors?

SH: Because they were terrific poets whose poetry continued a great tradition of revolutionary poets begun with Sappho and the Greeks, the ancient Chinese, the traditions of the world. They were also good friends... mentors even.

PA: Who do you regard as among the strongest, most original poets of our times?

SH: All of the aforementioned. Philip Levine, Denise Levertov, Gary Snyder, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Martin Espada and many others.

PA: What are the most incisive or charged themes poets are putting out there these days?

SH: Poets don’t really write by themes. Themes emerge mysteriously. The best political poems are NOT the result of wanting to make political statements or having an agenda. Great political poems surprise their authors. Agendas produce doggerel. The poetry is discovered in the making of the poem.

--Michael Shepler helped organize this interview.