The Dialogue Among Civilization project's goal is to coordinate 200 readings in 100 cities, an ambitious goal but one which I think can be achieved, but only if people around the world are aware of it.

So far, most of the participating organizations are in North America. But if you are aware of other literary groups who might be interested in participating in this UN-affiliated project, please contact the organizers. I'm dispersing this news to as many esteemed associates who are either overseas or have strong contacts around the world, with the hope of giving the Dialogue Among Civilization project some truly international presence.

About 75 cities are committed to readings for Dialogue Among Civilizations Through Poetry. Some of them are listed on this temporary website: http://www.rattapallax.com/un.htm

Criteria: Anyone can setup a reading in their city or town. All readings must take place during the last week in March 2001. Readings must be open to everyone. There can be more than one reading in each city or town. There is no limit on how many reading can take place in each city or town. Work at the grassroots-level because there is no funding to support each reading. Organize a reading at your local bookstore, cafe, school, library or town hall. Reading organizers have full control and responsibility for their readings. You determine who to feature and how to moderate your program. The reading should focus, in some way, to the over-all theme: Dialogue Among Civilizations Through Poetry.

CLMP NEWSWIRE: "DIALOGUE AMONG CIVILIZATIONS THROUGH POETRY" IS THE TALK OF THE LITERARY WORLD

In 1998, the United Nations General Assembly declared 2001 the "United Nations Year of Dialogue Among Civilizations." Its aim? To foster tolerance, respect and cooperation among peoples of the world.

In response, New York-based Rattapallax Press in conjunction with Poetry International-Rotterdam, Australia's Salt magazine and the USA's Kenyon Review, co-hosted an international literary conference at the United Nations on March 25 and 26.

The two-day conference attended by literary magazine and press editors from around the world was created to cultivate discussion on how best to generate a true dialogue among an international community through poetry and literature.

Several ideas were generated and discussed during the conference, including how to build an international web site devoted to the writing, review and dissemination of world poetry and the development and organization of an international poetry week.

"I asked myself, what does the United Nations symbolize?" says Ram Devineni, conference co-coordinator and founder and editor of Rattapallax Press (http://www.rattapallax.com). "I realized that as an entity the United Nations belongs to no single country. It belongs to everyone."

With that in mind, Devineni mobilized his colleagues in the literary community and, along with the United Nations Society of Writers, organized a series of worldwide literary programs to run in conjunction with the conference. The result is a global word fest featuring more than 200 poetry readings in over 100 cities throughout the world. All of the readings will take place between the last week of March and the first week of April.

A few exotic venues include a reading from Mt. Everest, one at Casey Station, a research outpost in Antarctica, and another aboard a scientific vessel in the West Philippine Sea. More traditional settings include the Guild Complex in Chicago, Chinese University of Hong Kong and the 14th Street Y in New York City. A reading is also planned at the United Nations in New York City and will feature Pulitzer Prize-winning poet, Yusef Komunyakaa and poets and writers, Joyce Carol Oates, Mei-mei Berssenbrugge and James Ragan.

To ensure some kind of unity among the readings, Devineni organized a contest to select one poem to be read universally at every event. Marilyn Hacker, renowned poet and former editor of the Kenyon Review, chose the winning poem, "Planet Earth," by Canadian poet P.K. Page from hundreds of nominations.

Devineni, who sheepishly admits that he never took a poetry or literature class in college, (he did get a C- in Expository Writing, however) used the bonus money he earned at his day job as a computer technology specialist to organize the international event. The cost was just under $12,000.

It has been money well spent for Devineni who frequently uses the word "passion" when describing his press and poetry in general. That passion had its beginnings while Devineni was filming an independent feature. After a chance meeting with a group of poets, he was inspired by them to launch Rattapallax magazine that debuted 2.5 years ago. A year ago, he founded the press, publishing eight books of poetry in the United States and Europe, fulfilling his goal to create an international presence for the press by the end of its first year of operations.

"I wanted Rattapallax to be an international publisher from the start," says Devineni. "In that regard, you can't beat working with the U.N."

News reported by: Leslie Schwartz

SUITE101.com: Preaching Poetry

By Kay Day

This past fall, as a conference approached, I spent some time preparing my workshop materials. At the same time, I was setting up book signings for Perfect Words. At times, I felt that all my hours were consumed by things like marketing, and the nuts and bolts of the business side of freelancing. The bright spots occurred when I presented my poetry to a live audience.

I could look out and see the responses on the faces of those in the audience. After the reading, I could even hear the responses. Some offered praise with comments like, “I know exactly how that feels.” Others told me about their own loved ones, and mentioned a line here and there that made them remember something from childhood. There were a few who came up and asked me to read their own poetry, and to tell them what I thought about it.

One very special reading was the United Nations Project, Dialogue Among Civilizations through Poetry. I coordinated South Carolina’s only reading the last week in March. We held it at the Richland County Public Library, recently voted tops in the nation by several library-related associations. This reading brought out a truly diverse audience. There were students from the University of South Carolina, poets from the community, and even a published novelist who came simply to hear my sonnets.

The auditorium at this library has wonderful acoustics, so even though a mic is available, you don’t need one. I read with Rize Cole and Dinah Johnson. Rize’s poetry embodies southern culture in a delivery you will never forget; the woman is a born performer and an excellent poet. Dinah Johnson’s children’s books are among the most beautiful to be found, and her young daughter also participated in the reading.

A dozen or so presentations later, I have come to a realization. Although I have to write in many genres to produce an income, poetry is and always has been my mission. When I’m asked to read, I accept, unless there’s a conflict that can’t be adjusted. When I was in college, I went to many poetry readings, and, without exception, the featured poets were all male, white, and firmly established in the literary world. We had a large number of poets at the college I attended. I often wondered why there were no readings for poets who had yet to make a mark. During those years, I formed a goal to broaden the scope of poetry so that it could be shared with all types of people.

I wanted to help change the face of poetry.

Like all inspired goals, this one produced a poem. I hope there are many more to come.

AUSTIN AMERICAN-STATESMAN: War aside, festival poets speak their minds
Monday, April 14, 2003

By Shilanda Woolridge

What do you do when you're a poet visiting Texas with strong views about current events? Spoken-word artists are known for pushing the envelope, but what would they say in Bush country?

At a time when the world community is highly fractured, written and spoken-word work brought politics and people together for the 11th annual Austin International Poetry Festival. The fest ended Sunday as 212 poets from 17 states and seven countries came to listen and be heard.

Nii Parkes came to Austin by way of London, but is originally from Ghana. Parkes had concerns about coming to Texas, and how the poetry he was going to read would be received. However, he didn't let those concerns change the content.

"I was hopeful that people were broadminded enough to realize that there were different points of view, and that it didn't mean we were here to attack anybody," Parkes said.

Other poets added a little bite to their bark. Julian Ramsey Wade, a poet from the United Kingdom, was the second place winner in the festival's International Poetry Slam. His high-scoring poem used humor to make fun of President Bush's propensity for grammatical foibles while critiquing the way the war on Iraq was started.

"At first I was afraid I'd get shot by a load of pro-Bush folks, but it's obvious poets are a peace-loving bunch," he said.

The world of poetry recently was involved in a flap involving first lady Laura Bush. A poetry event she was to attend was canceled before the war when it was feared the event would become too politicized.

Poets responded by staging their own events and defending their right to express.

But there wasn't much militant speech at this weekend's festival.

For some poets, the concepts of "pro-peace" and "anti-war" were easy to keep mutually exclusive. Larry Jaffe, a poet and co-chair of "Poets for Peace" who came from California for the fest, said, "I'm a poet for peace, but sometimes you have to fight," before a Saturday reading. "Poetry does wondrous changes in people. It gives them solace and opens them up to other viewpoints and ideas, hopefully without being too threatening," he said.

After the war started, a few ripples were felt. The planners of the festival renamed one of the readings that was originally titled "Poets for Peace."

Stazja McFadden, one of the organizers, said, "We don't want to offend. We do support the young men and women who are out there, but people have their own beliefs. We're here to raise spirits and enlighten."

A poet from India who lives in Canada didn't feel safe traveling, and a poet from Australia changed her plans to attend the festival.

The festival was a celebration of life and literature, and the war was rarely mentioned by international and domestic poets alike, McFadden said.

"The poets were just communicating. Some poets are political, but poetry is the forum, not politics, because the war, too, shall pass, but the poets will continue to poetize."

TIMES-NEWS: Dialogue poems slated Saturday

DURHAM — Seven Triangle-area poets will read works about the meaning of civilization at 8 p.m. Saturday at Duke University’s Center for Documentary Studies as part of the United Nations Dialogue Among Civilizations Through Poetry.

The reading is one of 240 in more than 200 cities around the world, the center said. It is sponsored by the Carolina African American Writer’s Collective and organized by local writer Mendi Lewis Odadike, and will include poems about ancestry, colonization and relationships. Other writers taking part are Victor Blue, Beverly Fields Burnette, Christian Campbell, Howard Craft, Yvette Fannel and Khalil Koromantee.

The Center for Documentary Studies is at 1317 W. Pettigrew St. across from Duke’s East Campus. (Take the Swift Avenue exit from the Durham Freeway.) For more information, call Obadike at (919) 419-2424. For more information about the United Nations program, visit the World Wide Web at dialoguepoetry.org.

THE HERALD: High school students feel at home at Writers Circle
Sunday, January 20, 2002

Writing, opinions respected at monthly gatherings

By Dan Walsh

THIS IS ONE CIRCLE FAST becoming recognized for the strength of its lines. Lines of prose and poetry, that is.

At a news conference and luncheon at Government House on Friday, Lt.-Gov. Governor Myra Freeman praised the High School Writers Circle and announced the young writers will lead a provincewide celebration of United Nations World Poetry Day on March 21.

The writers have made waves since Ray MacLeod, a teacher at Auburn Drive High School in Cole Harbour, established the group in 1998. Now in its fourth year, it has students from over 30 high schools across metro and Nova Scotia.

The group, based at Auburn Drive High - where its publication, the Talon, is created - is going strong.

The most recent issue of the Talon described a visit by Norwegian Second World War veterans to Nova Scotia. Norwegian students have been translating the Talon to learn English, and plan to exchange results with their Canadian peers as part of UNESCO's World Poetry Day.

The event will take place at Government House, where a writers circle hosted by Ms. Freeman in January 2001 attracted over 80 students.

The circles meet monthly at Chapters in Dartmouth. Students bring their writing to read aloud and can ask for group feedback or request silence. Usually, the meetings feature the candid type of literary discussion that gives the group its unique dynamic.

"I never really had experience with my writing before, having people talk about my writing, starting a discussion about it," says Amanda Rafuse, who last year was a Grade 12 student in Pictou County and twice made the two-hour drive to Chapters.

"The whole experience left a really big impression on me."

What did she make of her literary peers? "They were really outside the box," she says. "They all think outside the box. If there is a box. I dunno. The proverbial box." Ms. Rafuse, now studying at University of King's College, was asked to read her poem Crying Shame at Friday's luncheon press conference. Its evocative opening: "I eat my tears / like fine caviar / on toast points."

Chris Bessey, an Auburn Drive Grade 12 student, will read his poetry at the legislature to mark World Poetry Day.

He expresses some surprise that the writers circle - "a place where I feel welcome" - has caught on so strongly. "I never thought this many people would see my writing. It's kind of disturbing, in my mind."

For Mr. MacLeod, the root of the success is simple: students respecting the creative endeavours of other students.

"In our group, you can share and know that everyone is sympathetic," he says. "Everyone understands what you're doing and what the creative process is all about. And that makes it a very special place, because you can take risks there and know that there will not be a negative outcome."

Shemara Kane, also an Auburn Drive Grade 12 student, agrees.

"For me, it's really the openness of the group," he says. "You get exposed to things you definitely wouldn't get exposed to otherwise. To share with other people, especially internationally, is totally amazing."

Ian j. Matheson, of Sir John A. Macdonald High School in Hubley, is in his second year as a member of the group. "In some ways," he says, "it's a place for those who don't really fit into the whole school picture, " he says.

But there's still a representation of a school's diverse social fabric. "There's some jocks, there's the nerds, the Goths, geeks," he says.

He pre-empts his list, noting: "The main thing is, there's no discrimination against sexuality." Everyone with something to express is respected. "Every poem," he says, "is a carbon copy of a person's soul, a person's mind."

Ian is one of dozens of teens who attest to the confidence-building effect of the writers circle. "I'm looking into a career in writing now, which I wasn't before joining," he says.

For these teen writers, a lot of hard work has brought them a long way.

"Just coming here and learning that our writing has been recognized by the government of Canada and worldwide by UNESCO and Norway - it's great" says Brent Sharer, in Grade 12 at Queen Elizabeth High School in Halifax.

So is learning "that there's people who like to write and write good stuff - not just for English class."

Dan Walsh is a writer who lives in Dartmouth.

NYCBIGCITYLIT: The UN Dialogues Summit: Ragan, Komunyakaa, Berssenbrugge, Chimoy, and Oates.

By Maureen Holm

The nature of poetry is musical, thus, Lyric Recovery Festival culminated National Poetry Month with its appearance at Carnegie Hall (See March). The nature of poetry is international, thus, Rattapallax culminated its Spring "Dialogues" project at the United Nations headquarters.

On Thursday, March 29, the UN's 800-seat Conference Room 3 and most of the observers' balcony were filled to capacity. For two hours, from the vantage of our respective desks--Mexico and Micronesia--earpieces and microphones live, we were the picture of Keats's assertion that poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.

Giandomenico Picco, the Personal Representative of Secretary-General Kofi Annan, opened the session with his own work, a love poem written to his wife. Unremarkable, though doubtless sincere, the original Italian was likely more compelling. When he yielded to Mei-mei Berssenbrugge, language took over.

My origin is a linguistic surface like an ornamented wall.

With her first piece, "Chinese Space", Berssenbrugge began a redefinition of light, motion and the contextual illusion of terrestrial and temporal continuities, in which each poem evolved from the physical to the metaphysical and thence to a geometry of consciousness beyond cogitation. A childhood house evoked becomes a room which "prefers to scatter", the notion of containment an "ungrained regression of lyric spaces", contents the fragments the very plasticity of whose fragmentation defies definition by containment. So too, a self, disproved as container or contents, may be a phenomenological ambiguity of affinities in a constantly reconstituting idea of space where "light removes a non-bearing wall", identity a nomad on a multiplane where "all memories of tribe are replaceable".

The session host, Catherine Vijaya Claxton, introduced Sri Chimoy, regarded by some as India's greatest poet, who read several short rhyming works in an aged voice with a singing cadence: "My eternal days are found in speeding time." His themes were so large, his treatment so universal that they sometimes dissipated into the banal: "Eternity is a slave at my feet, Death a weeping child." More compelling was his piece, "The Absolute": "No mind, no form . . . I am it whom I have sought. . . . It, his compassion loves me." Well known for his treatment of some 70,000 birds, both in poetry and in paintings, Chimoy closed with the image of a "bird of fire winging the infinite."

Yusef Komunyakaa read seven pieces, all of them based in an earthy tangible, even when his speaker "darts in and out presence and memory". His odes to drum and maggot ("No one gets to heaven / without going through you first.") had the transformative ease of one with carnal knowledge of nitty-gritty evils (Talking Dirty to the Gods, Farrar Straus & Giroux 2000).

A woman once shattered me into a song . . .
Ghosts cannot slip back into the drum . . .
I have to drive trouble from the valley . . .
Ka-dong. I've beaten a song back into you.
Rise and walk away like a panther.

In "Thanks", he avoids a sniper's bullet in Vietnam, then a dud grenade wrapped in a "woman's wild colors," and yet "I'm still falling through silence." Later, he stands at the Vietnam memorial wall in Washington, "half-expecting to see my own [name]." He closed with a deep inhalation of life, its "salt and honeycombs", gratitude for his own bodily form, "I love this body . . . the soft quick motor of each breath . . . the birthmark like a cockfighter. . . . I know I was born to wear out."

Joyce Carol Oates followed Komunyakaa's gauzy Southern vowels with an Upstate New Yorker's flat a's, her very brief poems preceded by lengthy explanations. Most from this author of some of the darkest and most elegant of American novels, including Black Water, Bellefleur and Them, were humorous and unadorned, even playful. She gave us Elvis and the down-home waitress. "He fingered the lace of her slip / and she slapped his hand a little." In the 80's, she wrote a series of essays on heavyweight boxer Mike Tyson, the squeaky-voiced wife-beating, ear-biting, late-night red-light violating bad boy, who was disgusted by audiences who wanted him to hospitalize his opponent. He wore his soul "like jewels outside the body" and conveyed the "You don't know, but you know" redemption Oates finds inherent in boxing.

James Ragan embodies both the musical and the international nature of poetry. He featured at Carnegie for Lyric Recovery™ (with Galway Kinnell). An "ambassador of poetry," he has read for four heads of state. Multilingual himself, his work has been translated into a dozen European and Asian languages. As his Soviet hosts explained in 1985 at the first International Poetry Festival in Moscow, he writes about "things that matter in the world outside a country that needs to be invaded." It was only appropriate that he be (a contributing editor to this magazine and) the culminating reader at the United Nations, the closing voice on 200+ readings held worldwide as part of the UN's "Year of Dialogues Among Civilizations Through Poetry"

With his five poems--not read, but rather, recited fluidly from memory--from "The Rivers of Paris" (down the chutes of Montparnasse / birth-wet and river-deep / in bones descending") and "The Hunger Wall" ("watching hunger well"), to the humorous "Rilke on the Conveyor Belt at LAX [Los Angeles Airport]", then to "The Tent People of Beverly Hills" (They are the new ecology") and "The Astonishment of Living" ("Let all buckets fill, all loss be light"), Ragan held us transfixed, the gentle, but authoritative Speaker of the House for would-be poet-legislators. When he finished, the applause was unloosed, the congress united.

As a parting word, Ram Devineni announced an anthology of poems from the participating venues and we streamed out into the rain.

Program coordinators for the "Dialogues" project were: Ram Devineni, publisher of Rattapallax, Bhikshuni Weisbrot, Gary Shapiro, and Catherine Vijaya Claxton. Coordinators for the 200+ events worldwide were: Larry Jaffe, Antonieta Villamil, Kole Ade Odutola, Shaylaw Hawkins and Erminia Passannanti. Fictionopolis.com will help collect and publish the anthology.

By Thomas Nord

A poem can entertain, it can enlighten, it can even win someone's heart.
But can it bring about something more heavy-duty - say, world peace?
It's a quaint notion, but it's not something Ron Whitehead is kidding about.
"It can't hurt," said Whitehead, who eats, sleeps and breathes poetry as much as anyone in Louisville. "We have killed over 100 million people in one war after another in the past 100 years."
Well put.
Cynics should stay well away from the Bardstown Road Youth Cultural Center this evening, when Whitehead and a bevy of fellow bards will read poetry for peace.
It's at the behest of the United Nations, which has enlisted poets in 200 cities around the world to contribute their work as part of an effort to get folks to talk to each other, as opposed to killing each other.
The U.N., which has a habit of declaring a theme for every year, is calling 2001 "The Year of Dialogue Among Civilizations." That's a fancy way of saying, "Come in, sit down and listen to each other."
The U.N. has set aside today as a day for poets to come together and put their thoughts and expressions to work for peace. In 240 events in cities around the globe - as well as in such exotic outposts as the International Space Station, Mount Everest and Antartica - poems will celebrate the idea that someday the world's peoples can get along.
It's not that big a stretch for Whitehead, who has been writing and teaching poetry most of his life and is a firm believer in the power of words
"I want to provide a forum for people to come together," Whitehead said of his effort to organize the local reading, "It's only through the exchange of ideas that we can really understand each other."
Whitehead has recruited 34 poets from the region to participate in the reading. Each will have five minutes to do his or her thing. Although they are encouraged to read something related to the theme, there is no rule that says they have to, Whitehead noted. Poems read at the BRYCC House will be eligible for inclusion in an anthology of poems the U.N. is compiling to commemorate the day.
The first poet will begin reading at 6 p.m., and the event is expected to last until 10 p.m. There will also be a couple of musical acts. The $3 admission charge benefits the BRYCC House.
Putting aside for a moment the lofty ambitions attached to the event, Whitehead said he is energized by the young poets he is encountering these days, many of whom will be taking part today.
Whitehead, a devotee of beat poets like Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg and Lawrence Ferlinghetti, said the form has started to surge again, suggesting a new era of relevant, agitated poetry.
"There's a new generation of young poets who are exciting, whose work is developing," he said. "I'm watching for that next poet, or handful of poets, who will fill those shoes (of the beats)."
Much like the repressive 1950s fomented rebellion in the 1960s, Whitehead said he sees the groundwork being laid for a similar backlash in the world today.
"I sometimes wonder if we are living in a new 'dark ages,' " he mused.
But just as quickly, Whitehead snaps back. The U.N. event, he said, is a chance to celebrate the positive, not the pessimistic.
"I continue to believe in people, despite their actions," he said. "Because I continue to believe that people are basically good."