peripathetic

You can't hide a poet behind a bush.
A few days ago, America's First Lady Laura Bush was forced to cancel one of her White House poetry symposiums because my American friends were threatening to use their poetry to make a stand against war.

The Guardian quotes Mrs Bush's spokeswoman: "While Mrs Bush respects the right of all Americans to express their opinions, she, too, has opinions and believes it would be inappropriate to turn a literary event into a political forum."

What does Mrs Bush think literature is?? In my opinion, she is bordering on being openly stupid if she truly believes that any poet worth their salt will sit politely at a nice afternoon gathering to talk about poetry when aggression is in the offing and must be questioned.

Luckily, an enterprising poet and publisher, Sam Hamill, has set up a website, Poets Against The War, and Todd Swift has published an eBook filled with contributions by established poets from all over the world.

The eBook is hosted on this website in Adobe pdf format - download it from the link in the lefthand bar, copy it to serve from your site, print it and leave it in coffeeshops... up to you!