The people of Ukraine, and President Zelinskyy in particular, have inspired millions with their refusal to back down from the overwhelming Russian forces bearing down on them. Have you heard of the tomato jar incident? The sunflower seed incident? This astounding courage from ordinary citizens seems to come out of nowhere. Most of them don’t have weapons. (Except for a jar of pickled tomatoes). They aren’t all soldiers trained in combat.

I do not have any military training, just like most citizens in Ukraine. But you know what we do have here at DIY MFA? We’ve got bad eyesight from reading too much. And we’re pretty frisky with the words, am I right? 

Poetry is Powerful

I bet you didn’t know that poetry is popular at protests and rallies. It’s true. Poetry, in particular, lends itself naturally to inspiring crowds. There is something magnetic, hypnotizing even about the cadence of spoken poetry that blends perfectly with the crowd’s energy. Just ask anyone at the Martin Luther King Jr  ‘March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom’ rally in 1963 where he spoke to the crowd gathered there about a dream he had, about a better life for his children. You know, the one we still hear sixty years later every Martin Luther King Jr day.

Words are powerful – words can change our minds, our laws, and children’s futures. Poetry is quick, visceral, packing a verbal punch that is compact and powerful. Talk about a magic bullet.

Protesting through Poetry: A Long History in America

Poetry as protest has a long history in America, including the famous W.E.B. DU BOIS. Du Bois was the first African-American to earn a doctorate and was a founding member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). His influential works protested the Jim Crow Laws, lynching, and the systematic discrimination in education, real estate, and employment in America decades before the more recent Black Lives Matter movement gained ground.

If you’d like to hear more recent examples of protesting through poetry, NPR talks to poets Kwame Alexander and Nikki Giovanni on the Morning Edition program. Both poets discuss what protesting through poetry means to them, and the conversation is a lively and quick 7-minute discussion of using poetry to highlight social injustice.

If you’d like a list of protest poetry through the years, check out this piece from the Poetry Foundation on Resistance through Poetry.

Creating Protest Poetry Yourself

If this is getting you fired up to try on your poet-activist super-hero cape, excellent. Like any good poem, protest poetry has layers. It isn’t just about using words to combat violence and social inequalities. It’s also about constructing a narrative around processing the trauma of conflict. Protesting through poetry is a way of creating a litany of tools we can use to break through the shell of shock, anxiety, or guilt about surviving. 

Poetry is the only therapy I know of that changes the person writing it and has the power and specific potential to change the reader’s life as well – not to mention the world in general.

If you’d like even more examples of protest poetry, the Poetry Foundation has assembled an archive of poetry about the Vietnam War, both during and after the controversial conflict. These poems were written by military veterans, medical personnel, journalists covering the war, and refugees.

If you don’t mind, I’d love to round off this piece about protesting through poetry by sharing a few poems about the war in Ukraine. First, I want to mention a poem by Simon Armitage (the UK Poet Laureate) called “Resistance” about the invasion of Ukraine. In the last few verses, Simon calls attention to the Ukrainian ‘woman in black’ who gives sunflower seeds to the Russian soldier, 

‘insists his marrow will nourish the national flower’

Simon ends the poem with hope – that the air-raid sirens can’t drown out the Cathedral bells. This detail reflects a small hope, like the sunflower seeds, but it is there and defiant, as all hope is, no matter how small.

Another recommendation I’d like to share is “A Poem from Ukraine” by Vasyl Stus, who, although he passed away in 1985, is considered one of the most significant Ukrainian poets of our time. Although he isn’t speaking of the most current conflict, his line about being on the battlefield;

‘Where all my soldiers are the words I wield’ – are as relatable today as when they were written.

If reading can be resistance, then poetry can certainly (and has been) a form of protest. We can’t all fight with weapons—sometimes, all we can do is wage war with words. And, maybe, pickle some tomatoes and have them handy in a glass jar nearby? Just a thought. Although with my throwing arm, I’m likely to leave a more significant dent in a nosy drone with a well-written protest poem. 

Tell us in the comments: Have you ever experimented with protesting through poetry?

Angela Yeh is an East Coast Canadian native that lives and works in the great state of Texas. Angela is a black belt wanna-be who loves to garden, write about magic, and eat cake. If you’d like to check out her first published novel, A Phoenix Rises, she will send you cookies (not cake – she’s already eaten the cake). She lives with her husband, two lovely human children, and three cranky fur babies. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram or her website.

The post Protesting through Poetry: Embrace Your Inner Poet-Activist! appeared first on DIY MFA.

Today I have the pleasure of speaking with Dr. Sally Parry, the Executive Director of the Sinclair Lewis Society. She earned her PhD in American Literature (as well as 19th Century British Fiction and Medieval Literature) from Fordham University in NYC and wrote her dissertation on Sinclair Lewis (Sinclair Lewis: The Darkening Vision of His Later Novels). She is currently the Associate Dean for Academic Programs and Student Affairs at Illinois State University.

In this interview, we’re going to talk about Sinclair Lewis’ novel It Can’t Happen Here. Originally published in 1935 as a response to the rise of Hitler and Mussolini in Europe, It Can’t Happen Here has renewed relevance in the wake of Donald Trump’s campaign and election.

In fact, sales numbers for this title have gone through the roof, with mass market sales up 2,611% over last year, and eBook sales have jumped 1,528%. Not only that, this book has gotten a lot of buzz in the media in the past year, and this momentum doesn’t appear to be slowing down.

I’m excited to speak with Dr. Sally Parry about this book and the role that literature plays in politics and activism.

In this episode Sally and I discuss:

• Literature and activism
• Author intentions versus audience perceptions
• The social responsibilities of writers

Plus, her #1 tip for writers.

It Can’t Happen Here

It Can’t Happen Here (affiliate link) is a cautionary tale about the fragility of democracy, and it is an alarming, eerily timeless look at how fascism could take hold in America.  Written during the Great Depression, when the country was largely oblivious to Hitler’s aggression, it juxtaposes sharp political satire with the chillingly realistic rise of a president who becomes a dictator to save the nation from welfare cheats, sex, crime, and a liberal press.

As with most books we feature on this site, the above is an Amazon affiliate link. This means if you choose to purchase via this link, DIY MFA will get a small commission at no cost to you. Thank you for supporting DIY MFA!

Recent media coverage:

• Salon.com, It really can happen here: The novel that foreshadowed Donald Trump’s authoritarian appeal (Sept. 2015)
• TIME, The Book People Are Saying Predicted Donald Trump’s Rise, as Reviewed in 1935 (Nov. 2016)
• The New Yorker, Getting Close to Fascism with Sinclair Lewis’s “It Can’t Happen Here” (Oct. 2016)
• Money, Sinclair Lewis Novel “It Can’t Happen Here” Sells Out Online (Nov. 2016)
• Salon.com, Books old and new in 2016 got boost from Trump candidacy (Dec. 2016)
• The Huffington Post, Books for Our Times: “It Can’t Happen Here,” by Sinclair Lewis (a Novel) (Nov. 2016)
• The Washington Post, How does Donald Trump stack up against American literature’s fictional dictators? Pretty well, actually. (June 2016)
• Houston Chronicle, The novel and play that predicted Donald Trump’s rise (April 2016)

About Sinclair Lewis

The Sinclair Lewis Society was formed to encourage study of, critical attention to, and general interest in the work, career, and legacy of Sinclair Lewis. The Society works to facilitate a broader discussion of his writing among scholars, critics, teachers, students, book collectors, and readers everywhere.

Members of the Sinclair Lewis Society receive the bi-annual Sinclair Lewis Society Newsletter. We encourage scholarship concerning Sinclair Lewis, and we have provided a bibliography of primary and secondary sources concerning Lewis on our scholarly works page, as well as transcripts from an exclusive interview with Richard Lingeman, author of Sinclair Lewis: Rebel from Main Street. We also meet every few years in Sauk Centre, Minnesota, Lewis’ hometown, for conferences and usually in connection with the annual Sinclair Lewis Days.

Harry Sinclair Lewis (1885–1951) was born in Sauk Centre, Minnesota. His childhood and early youth were spent in the Midwest, and later he attended Yale University, where he was editor of the literary magazine. After graduating in 1907, he worked as a reporter and in editorial positions at various newspapers, magazines, and publishing houses from the East Coast to California. He was able to give this work up after a few of his stories had appeared in magazines and his first novel, Our Mr. Wrenn (1914), had been published. Main Street (1920) was his first really successful novel, and his reputation was secured by the publication of Babbitt (1922). Lewis was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for Arrowsmith (1925) but refused to accept the honor, saying the prize was meant to go to a novel that celebrated the wholesomeness of American life, something his books did not do. He did accept, however, when in 1930 he became the first American writer to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature. During the last part of his life, he spent a great deal of time in Europe and continued to write both novels and plays. In 1950, after completing his last novel, World So Wide (1951), he intended to take an extended tour but became ill and was forced to settle in Rome, where he spent some months working on his poems before dying.

Link to Episode 134

(Right-click to download.)

If you liked this episode…

Head over to iTunes, leave a review, and subscribe so you’ll be first to know when new episodes are available. Also, if you know anyone who might enjoy this podcast, please share!

Until next week, keep writing and keep being awesome!

The post Episode 134: Literature as a Reflection of Society – Interview with Dr. Sally Parry appeared first on DIY MFA.

Newsletter subscribers get a sneak peek at these essays before I post them. They can also help crowdsource this column, by replying to my emails or sharing their perspectives in our Facebook group.

Join the community here.

Dear word nerd,

As the parent of two kids under age five, I find myself saying “Use your words” a lot. Use your words has become a euphemism for: “Stop that inappropriate behavior and talk it out.” But what happens when the adults in our world—our very leaders, in fact—are misusing their words? As a writer, this gives me great pause.

Because I am a writer—because words are my superpower–—the First Amendment has always been the part of our constitution I have held most dear. But expressing our ideas is not something we are entitled to or owed, and we must treat that freedom of expression with deep respect. If these past weeks have shown me anything, it is that there aren’t enough people in the world who understand the power of their words.

It is up to us writers to fix this.

My challenge for you today is to take responsibility for your creative work and use your words.
By this, I mean three things.

1) Own your words.

Tell your story. Stand your ground as a writer. Don’t wait for someone else to say what you want to say. Don’t rely on another person to speak out. You don’t need anyone else’s permission save your own. Use your words.

2) Use your words responsibly.

“With great power comes great responsibility.” Yes, I did just quote the cheesiest line from movie Spiderman, but hear me out. As writers, we know how to bend and shape language to our will. While we have the freedom to speak our minds, we must also recognize and respect the power we can wield.

“Show, don’t tell” goes beyond the pages of our story. It does us no good to speak out against words gone bad, if in doing so we sink to the same grotesque level as those we are criticizing. As writers, it’s our job to model good behavior, and show the world how to use words with empathy and responsibility.

3) Remember that you have an incredible gift.

Just as words can harm, they can also heal. Just as speech can polarize and divide, it can also bring people together and unite them toward a common goal. As writers, we have the power to use our words to change the minds and hearts of others. This is magic. It’s a superpower. Our superpower. And it’s our responsibility to use it.

Use Your Words

Yesterday I shared a piece where I talked about service, and how as the instigator and leader of this community I have shifted to embrace service as one of my personal (and entrepreneurial) core values. Today I’ve addressed the topic of responsibility and next week I will share my thoughts on gratitude. But most importantly, stay tuned for when I post another essay this afternoon. In it, I will share my thoughts about one of my favorite topics, but and one that also terrifies me. This topic is: Love.

In the meantime, go write something and share it with the world. It can be a poem, a blog post, a tweet, a paragraph of your NaNoWriMo manuscript… anything! All that matters is that it’s yours. Your words. Your story. Your voice.

Sharing our words is like lighting a candle in the dead of night. Alone, one candle can almost get lost in the darkness, but if we all stand together, our candles will light up the world.

Loads of literary love,

The post Writer Fuel: Use Your Words appeared first on DIY MFA.