Permanent Free Speech Wall in Charlottesville, Virginia, U.S. courtesy of Daniel Rothamel under CC BY 2.0
“It’s now very common to hear people say, ‘I’m rather offended by that.’ As if that gives them certain rights. It’s actually nothing more… than a whine. ‘I find that offensive.’ It has no meaning; it has no purpose; it has no reason to be respected as a phrase. ‘I am offended by that.’ Well, so fucking what.” I saw hate in a graveyard, Stephen Fry, The Guardian, 5 June 2005”
As the U.S. lurches into what promises to be a vitriolic campaign season, battles over free speech on campus are simmering again. Students, administrators, and faculty are certain to find themselves at the vortex of a national conversation on threats to free speech and how to address them.
To avert censorship on campus and prevent free speech controversies from causing turmoil, PEN America just published a first-of-its-kind digital resource, the PEN America Campus Free Speech Guide. The guide provides step-by-step instructions for scenarios involving invited speakers, academic freedom, hateful expression, and campus protests, among other topics. The online resource is rooted in PEN America’s own Principles on Campus Free Speech and the organization’s extensive research on campus free speech issues. The guide provides a concrete, accessible reference for how to cope with speech-related challenges in the classroom, on the quad, and online.
“Now more than ever, university leaders and students need a go-to resource to understand how to protect free speech and keep their communities open and thriving,” said Jonathan Friedman, director of PEN America’s campus free speech project. “For the past three years, PEN America has been working with administrators, faculty, students, and staff across the country. This guide brings together their collective wisdom, and aims to fill their need for detailed, actionable guidance on how to balance protections for free speech on campus with efforts to advance diversity and inclusion. We hope the guide serves as a starting to place to inform campus stakeholders not only about the law, but also about best practices for how to promote dialogue, encourage the free exchange of ideas, and ensure an inclusive environment where all community members have opportunities to be heard.”
PEN America’s Campus Free Speech Guide walks users through some of the thorniest campus speech scenarios. It offers case studies on how to address hateful speech; a legal roadmap for public and private universities to adhere to the First Amendment and uphold precepts of academic freedom; a resource library stocked with advice, sample policies, and sample statements; and FAQs specifically designed to answer the questions of administrators, faculty, and students.
“Since we began our campus speech work, educators across the country have been crying out for a roadmap to help them navigate clashes that can erupt into violence and destroy careers,” said PEN America CEO Suzanne Nossel. “Our university campuses are crucial breeding grounds for the broadest range of ideas and opinions. This guide offers concrete tools and methods to help them stay that way, while dealing constructively with inevitable clashes of opinions and values. Building on years of research and consultation, we are moving beyond finger-pointing over curbs on speech to advance concrete solutions that enable everyone on campus to have their say.”
EVENT THIS EVENING / 6:30 p.m. Eastern Time / New York / Free and Open to the Public but seating is limited /Registration Required
The launch of this new resource coincides with a panel event at NYU on September 26, “Campus at a Crossroads: Free Speech, Truth, and Democracy in an Election Year.” Co-sponsored by PEN America and New York University’s Center for the Humanities and Institute for Public Knowledge, the panel will bring together academics, writers, and students for a discussion of debates over free speech, truth, and the university. Read more about the event here.
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This post is courtesy of PEN America, The Guardian, Wikipedia, and my bookshelf. The Poet by Day actively supports freedom of speech and artistic expression and human rights.
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PEN America stands at the intersection of literature and human rights to protect open expression in the United States and worldwide. It champions the freedom to write, recognizing the power of the word to transform the world. Our mission is to unite writers and their allies to celebrate creative expression and defend the liberties that make it possible.
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“Providing food, shelter, clothing and education is not enough any more, because all of this would have no meaning in the end, if your children do not have a planet to live on with health and prosperity.” Abhijit Naskar, The Constitution of The United Peoples of Earth
this perfect blue-green planet, her youth
dream among the strains of their hope,
dream of us like our sun and moon,
coordinating … if only we would,
sowing the rich soil with right-action,
cultivating a greening of our compassion,
acting on a commonsense vision
the fruits of our being-ness plant their
ideals, shared values, a call for accountability,
for a re-visioning unencumbered by insanity,
rich fields to harvest, color, sound, textures,
rough and smooth, the deep rootedness of
their stand and stand for, their wise demands
casting a spell that we might see with one eye,
splendor hidden behind our irresponsibility,
their effervescent call, blossoming unity, vision –
bright spinning planet gently graced with these
wildflowers, these precious perceptive youth.
Dedicated to the young people of the world who teach us many lessons as they reach across borders in their stand for climate action.
Jamie Dedes. I’m a freelance writer, poet, content editor, and blogger. I also manage The BeZineand its associated activities and The Poet by Dayjamiededes.com, an info hub for writers meant to encourage good but lesser-known poets, women and minority poets, outsider artists, and artists just finding their voices in maturity. The Poet by Day is dedicated to supporting freedom of artistic expression and human rights. Email thepoetbyday@gmail.com for permissions, commissions, or assignments.
“Poets are shameless with their experiences: they exploit them.” Friedrich Nietzsche
January Is On the Wane
after Sor Juan Inés de la Cruz
January is on the wane leaving behind early dark
and champagne hopes for the genus Rosa.
Garden roses want pruning now, solicitous cultivation.
Layer shorter under taller, drape on trellises
and over pergolas, the promise of color and scent,
climbers retelling their stories in a ballet up stone walls,
an heirloom lace of tea roses, a voluptuous panorama
rhymed with shrubs and rock roses in poetic repetition.
Feminine pulchritude: their majesties in royal reds
or sometimes subdued in pink or purple gentility,
a cadmium-yellow civil sensibility, their haute couture.
Is it the thorny rose we love or the way it mirrors us
in our own beauty and barbarism, our flow into decrepitude?
They remind of our mortality with blooms, ebbs, and bows
to destiny. A noble life, by fate transformed in season.
Divinely fulsome, that genus Rosa, sun-lighted, reflexed. And January? January is ever on the wane.
A Una Rosa
Rosa divina que en gentil cultura
eres, con tu fragrante sutileza,
magisterio purpureo en la belleza,
enseñanza nevada a la hermosura.
Amago de la humana arquitectura,
ejemplo de la vana gentileza,
en cuyo ser unió naturaleza
la cuna alegre y triste sepultura.
¡Cuán altiva en tu pompa, presumida,
soberbia, el riesgo de morir desdeñas,
y luego desmayada y encogida
de tu caduco ser das mustias señas,
con que con docta muerte y necia vida,
viviendo engañas y muriendo enseñas!
– Sor Juan Inés de la Cruz (Juana Inés de Asbaje y Ramírez de Santillana)
WEDNESDAY WRITING PROMPT
I thought we’d do something a bit different this week. I hope it’s something everyone will enjoy. Instead of a theme, write a poem in the spirit of one that you love and was written by someone else. Put your poem in the comments section and reference the poem you’re working off of.
please submit your poem/s by pasting them into the comments section and not by sharing a link
please submit poems only, no photos, illustrations, essays, stories, or other prose
PLEASE NOTE:
Poems submitted through email or Facebook will not be published.
IF this is your first time joining us for The Poet by Day, Wednesday Writing Prompt, please send a brief bio and photo to me at thepoetbyday@gmail.com to introduce yourself to the community … and to me :-). These are partnered with your poem/s on first publication.
PLEASE send the bio ONLY if you are with us on this for the first time AND only if you have posted a poem (or a link to one of yours) on theme in the comments section below.
Deadline: Monday, September 23 by 8 pm Pacific Time. If you are unsure when that would be in your time zone, check The Time Zone Converter.
Anyone may take part Wednesday Writing Prompt, no matter the status of your career: novice, emerging or pro. It’s about exercising the poetic muscle, showcasing your work, and getting to know other poets who might be new to you.
You are welcome – encouraged – to share your poems in a language other than English but please accompany it with a translation into English.
Jamie Dedes. I’m a freelance writer, poet, content editor, and blogger. I also manage The BeZineand its associated activities and The Poet by Dayjamiededes.com, an info hub for writers meant to encourage good but lesser-known poets, women and minority poets, outsider artists, and artists just finding their voices in maturity. The Poet by Day is dedicated to supporting freedom of artistic expression and human rights. Email thepoetbyday@gmail.com for permissions, commissions, or assignments.
nights with ghosts . dear samueri, my friend i will never see you again; maybe i will. but i shall not know until father finds us a new address , addresses! we have none anymore. we are of no address. . now that i have written this letter, where do i post it to? shall i say, samueri, care of the next rubble harare?
—child’s poem This poem was included in an article by American poet Karen Margolisin the now defunct Poetry of Solidarity. You can read the backstory on this poem HERE.
Here we are at Tuesday again, the day when we share poems submitted in response the last Wednesday Writing Prompt, Some Mothers’ Hearts Have Stopped, September 18, which brought attention to the hearts of mothers who have lost their children to war. I know people didn’t like the photo I put up with it, but I felt that the reality needs to be faced. We may not like to look at it, but it is the what some people in some places face everyday. Often they have never known another way of life.
This compassionate collection is courtesy of Anjum Wasim Dar, Sheila Jacob, Urmila Mahajan, and Sonja Benskin Mesher. Today we introduce and warmly welcome Benedicta Boamah with her poem Flaws. Benedicta also made her debut in this month’s issue of The BeZine.
Enjoy! and do join us for the next Wednesday Writing Prompt, which will post tomorrow morning.
Flaws
An indelible wound
Shaded in taking sides
Stabbing ruins of fierce restraints
Obvious bruises that shadows pains of the past
In the middle of questioned thoughts
A gaze and a stare
With events of civil unrest
The peculiar cry of the heart
Fights with unending demands
Voices of grief
Engraved in words
Penetrating struggles for peace and freedom
A protest in waiting
BENEDICTA BOAMAH is a skilled emergency nurse in Ghana who writes poetry during her leisure periods. I was born in Bloemfontein, Free State though a Ghanaian and completed my degree program as a professional nurse in Garden City University College in Kumasi, Ghana.I’m the fourth and last child and as it stands my parents are retired lecturers. Currently, I have a personal blog on WordPress and a partner organisation that deals in emergency courses and live webinars. I have an inner passion to write daily from the heart in making a difference as a poet in an outstanding literary world.
A Tragedy For The Mother Alone
Innocent child smiling laughing
with the front teeth missing
running wild with open arms
happiness flooding with a toy
oblivious of time trial or suffering
death or exhaustion-
just a colorful world of fun and joy
of toffees chocolates and ice creams
of sound sleep and sweet dreams
But hark! Stillness creeps, Look Out!
speeding trucks, shells and bomb blasts
cruel and wild, dashing falling fast-
bubbling laughter turned to screams
twisted iron and ripped seams-
A light extinguished
A silenced home
A love lost
A shattered dream’
Many more put to sleep
in the vicious scheme-
people stood and looked
stared and stared,no one shared
no one could share
the shock the grief the pain-
the invisible cutting chain
can a child be called, ‘my own?’
how the soft warm heart turns
into a hard feeling less, stone-
the silent perpetual moan is
For The Mother Alone-
For The Mother Alone
and I wonder,I wait-
whose turn would it be
which country which people
after the Kashmiri?
and like many other on other
lands, ruled by hate and race
as if each one came first
all is mine no matter what-
what possessiveness strong
resides in man, making him blind
what to say with guns and pellets
no traditions no laws no bonds
distances, absences, missing sons
and husbands, walls and fences
‘grieving hearts in survivor bodies’
how to move on in fear and blood
no more would there be the music
of the pipe- what good to follow hence
we wait for -then The One Man who
will come, help guide comfort and
make all the difference-
white is natural and so is black
but for black white would not be-
in darkness stars are the light
by day it is the sun
variegated colors of the world
in deserts yellow in fields green
in people dark and pale
in animals spots and lines
in wars, red with blood
covered or uncovered
heads are round –
bullets guns missiles
are the same, all kill
in oceans or mountains
on land and sea-
nothing matters when
hate comes in –
‘Hope is the thing with feathers
that perches in the soul’ and
sings the tune without words
and never stops-at all-‘
despair reigns in camps
isolated parched famished-
can an emoji reflect captivity
curfew torture rape or death ?
Hark ! I believe I hear the Piper’s Call
May the Good Lord help us all Amen.
“POETRY PEACE and REFORM Go Together -Let Us All Strive for PEACE on EARTH for ALL -Let Us Make a Better World -WRITE To Make PEACE PREVAIL.” Anjum Wasim Dar
When I Asked My Mother About War
She said she wasn’t afraid.
Just got on with things,
everyone did, they had no choice.
Yet there were nights when Heinkels
droned across the sky.
Bombs fell like leaden birds
and roofs collapsed
in clouds of rubble.
Wasn’t she afraid her house
might be hit?
Didn’t she have nightmares
of Nazi troops landing on the coast:
of tanks rumbling through local streets
and grinding past the sweet shop,
grocers and Parkfield Café?
She turned eighteen
the month war was declared
and knew it wasn’t a game;
worked in a factory during the week
and discussed with other girls
whether or not to join the ATS.
She went to the pictures
on Saturday afternoons
and spent Sunday mornings at church;
prayed for the King and Queen,
her Dad, sister, elder brothers
stationed “somewhere in England”
and whispered an extra Our Father
for her Mom who held down
two jobs, queued for rationed meat
and conjured tasty meals from scraps.
She insisted she didn’t dwell on death
and perhaps she didn’t.
Perhaps fear was the shadow
at her heels some evenings
as she waved her Mom off to work,
heard sirens wail in the distance
and closed the blackout curtains.
Perhaps she hurried
to the kitchen’s warmth,
sat with hands clenched
and white-knuckled
around a mug of strong tea.
To purchase her little gem of a volume, Through My Father’s Eyes (review, interview, and a sampling of poems HERE), contact Sheila directly at she1jac@yahoo.com
War and Peace
Let’s talk about war
humanity sunk to
new levels of the old
salivating avaricious
degrading everything
precious
hovering over a fate
that ordains one must
watch others die
before succumbing
let’s not talk about clouds
of chickens in a poultry pen
like a company of pigs
awaiting the sticking knife
icing a throat to end appeals
in a universal language
we’ve reserved the fanfare
of war for ourselves
life’s a fistful of rupees at
the local bazaar
awash with the lilies of
heated haggling to hide
the smells of fear and pain
carnage unleashes in
daily forms on warm
families of bodies huddled
under less privileged names
knife wielding peace
makes little sense
to the other side
hovering over a fate
that ordains one must
watch others die
before succumbing
double edged slaughter
stains severing hands
beasts of war will be nourished
until life is viewed in entirety
and impresses both
sides of the coin
Sonja Benskin Mesher, RCA paintings (This is her Facebook page, so you can connect with her there as well as view photographs of her colorful paintings.)
Jamie Dedes. I’m a freelance writer, poet, content editor, and blogger. I also manage The BeZineand its associated activities and The Poet by Dayjamiededes.com, an info hub for writers meant to encourage good but lesser-known poets, women and minority poets, outsider artists, and artists just finding their voices in maturity. The Poet by Day is dedicated to supporting freedom of artistic expression and human rights. Email thepoetbyday@gmail.com for permissions, commissions, or assignments.
Jamie Dedes. I’m a freelance writer, poet, content editor, and blogger. I also manage 
BENEDICTA BOAMAH is a skilled emergency nurse in Ghana who writes poetry during her leisure periods. I was born in Bloemfontein, Free State though a Ghanaian and completed my degree program as a professional nurse in Garden City University College in Kumasi, Ghana.I’m the fourth and last child and as it stands my parents are retired lecturers. Currently, I have a personal blog on WordPress and a partner organisation that deals in emergency courses and live webinars. I have an inner passion to write daily from the heart in making a difference as a poet in an outstanding literary world.
Jamie Dedes' THE POET BY DAY Webzine 