Hotel Emergencies

The fire alarm sound: is given as a howling sound. Do
       not use the lifts. The optimism sound: is given as the
       sound of a man brushing his teeth. Do not go to bed.
       The respectability sound: is given as a familiar honking
       sound. Do not run, do not sing. The dearly-departed
       sound: is given as a rumble in the bones. Do not enter
       the coffin. The afterlife sound: is given as the music of
       the spheres. It will not reconstruct. The bordello sound:
       is given as a small child screaming. Do not turn on the
       light. The accident sound: is given as an ambulance
       sound. You can hear it coming closer, do not crowd the
       footpaths. The execution sound: is given as the sound of
       prayer. Oh be cautious, do not stand too near

 or you will surely hear: the machinegun sound, the weeping
      mother sound, the agony sound, the dying child sound:
      whose voice is already drowned by the approaching
      helicopter sound: which is given as the dead flower
      sound, the warlord sound, the hunting and fleeing and
      clattering sound, the amputation sound, the bloodbath
      sound, the sound of the President quietly addressing
      his dinner; now he places his knife and fork together (a
      polite and tidy sound) before addressing the nation

and making a just and necessary war sound: which is given
      as a freedom sound (do not cherish memory): which is
      given as a security sound: which is given as a prisoner
      sound: which is given again as a war sound: which is
      a torture sound and a watchtower sound and a firing
      sound: which is given as a Timor sound: which is given
      as a decapitation sound (do not think you will not gasp
      tomorrow): which is given as a Darfur sound: which is
      given as a Dachau sound: which is given as a dry river-
      bed sound, as a wind in the poplars sound: which is
      given again as an angry god sound:

which is here as a Muslim sound: which is here as a Christian
      sound: which is here as a Jewish sound: which is here as
      a merciful god sound: which is here as a praying sound;
      which is here as a kneeling sound: which is here as a
      scripture sound: which is here as a black-wing sound: as
      a dark-cloud sound: as a black-ash sound: which is given
      as a howling sound: which is given as a fire alarm sound:

which is given late at night, calling you from your bed (do
      not use the lifts): which is given as a burning sound, no,
      as a human sound, as a heartbeat sound: which is given
      as a sound beyond sound: which is given as the sound
      of many weeping: which is given as an entirely familiar
      sound, a sound like no other, up there high in the smoke
      above the stars

Bill Manhire
from Lifted, Te Herenga Waka University Press (VUP), 2005

At the weekend it felt like a monster had taken over all our rooms and was scoffing up joy and fortitude and hope and leaving dribbles of greed and ignorance and violence on the wooden floors. I got to thinking about protest. I got to thinking about the ban the bomb badges I pinned to my school bag in 1969. I got to thinking about the Vietnam protestors, Martin Luther King, Bob Dylan, the women’s liberation movements, Rachel Carson’s The Silent Spring. I got to think about doing my Italian doctorate and reading about clientelism, corrupt governments, writers who challenged injustice and inequity, as I considered the ink in the pen of Italian women writing across a century.

And I got to thinking about how we have never stopped writing protest poems in Aotearoa.

Like many others, my heart is breaking at the situation in Gaza and in the Ukraine, at the recent refusal of our coalition government to recognise the Palestine State, at Israel’s interception of aid and peace flotillas overnight. I can not stop mourning our inhumanity. The senseless murder and starvation of men, women, children, aide workers, journalists.

I decided to create a third new series on Poetry Shelf entitled Protest. I want to feature protest poems from various decades and I want to feature specific issues.

But what is a protest poem? Poetry protest can take many forms: from subtle spotlights to fierce outrage. Protest includes placards and banners with overt messages, loud and clear. It includes stories that render inhumanity, injustice and struggle visible, whether in journalism, fiction, poetry or the oral stories we share. But protest can also be concealed in symbols and parables, especially in societies run by despots and tyrants. I have been wondering if this might be in store for the USA.

Many of us are finding it impossible not to make room for protest in our writing, for grief and helplessness.

How to write in such damaged and damaging times?

Today I’m looking at damp patches of Waitākere sky with Jimmy Cliff on full volume, the words of beloved sixties and seventies song writers streaming in my ears, thinking Bob and Joni and Neil. And yes, it is a wide wide world, it’s a rough-rough road, and yes it’s still inhumane fighting, genocide, greed and abuse. Are we sitting in Jimmy’s limbo with the world on fire and entrenched suffering in the lands? Waiting for the dice to roll. Today even my morning is a dense dark heavy personal patch, but I’m thinking of Helen Clark, John Campbell, Anne Salmond, Tusiata Avia, the frontline workers, journalists, songwriters, politicians, poets, caregivers, forest and ocean guardians, so many people across the globe who are working against all odds to hold onto the light. To share the light. To gift the light.

I have decided to dedicate my first Protest post to Gaza (Friday Oct 3rd). I’ve already posted Gaza poems on the blog but I’ve decided to bring them together along with some others; poets and poems standing together, heart alongside heart, voice alongside voice. Some poets were unsure their poems were protest poems, but I think of the Poetry Shelf protest series as a way of shining light, a way of showing support, a way of saying no to inhumanity injustice cruelty and all manner of -isms.

Bill Manhire has posted a number of Gaza poems on social media and gave permission to repost one in tomorrow’s post, but he also mentioned how his poem ‘Hotel Emergencies’, a poem written during the Iraq conflict 20 years ago, “seems to live beyond its moment”. And I agree. And this is why I want to travel through the decades and revisit poetry protest across a century.

To have heard Bill read ‘Hotel Emergencies’ at a festival, one of my all-time go-to poems, was utterly memorable. You can listen to Bill read the poem. There are certain poems we carry with us, and for me this is one of them.

On Facebook this morning, Ariana Tikao mentioned going to the Catalyst 22 launch last night at Space Academy in Ōtautahai. She read her poem ‘Prayer’, a poem which “stitches together the memories held in the whenua at Ōnawe with the genocide taking place in Gaza right now”. She asks us where is the prayer that will forge peace. She speaks of the flotilla, of the suffering: unbearable unforgivable relentless.

And our hearts are breaking apart.

And we’ve got to speak shout sing and whisper, hold a vital light, hold our loved ones close, hold this precious day and take the next compassionate step whether fierce or gentle.

Let’s keep writing and sharing poetry.
And protesting.

Peace
20 May

What if I made up a poem about a house
on a hill with views of the sea and passionfruit
vines laden, and a woman knitting stories
of family connections and sublime epiphanies
into socks and scarves and comfort blankets
with an abundance of vegetables in garden plots
and fruit on the trees and soup simmering
whatever the season and how she is always content
in her own company but one day she opens
a newspaper and it is full of war and plague
and bullies and hunger and racism and side-lined
histories and abusive relationships, underfunded
hospitals and underfunded schools, and she
looks at the olive-green sea and she smells

the tomato soup simmering the fresh basil aromatic
in the air and she turns on her radio and hears
the voice of a young Palestinian student
begging the world to listen, begging for freedom
for her people and how the relentless bombs
trap everyone in houses and how aid can’t get
through and how nowhere is safe and how
everywhere is under attack, and the woman
on the hill tries to imagine the terrified children,
the lack of news and power and water, and how
the catastrophe goes deep into roots and land and home,
and how they cannot pray safely in mosques, and how when
Palestinians resist they are terrorists and their resistance
is deemed invalid, and the woman on the hill looks

at the patch of blue sky and the free-floating clouds
and puts down her knitting with its happy stitching
its loving connections and storytelling skeins
and tells the olive-green sea that we are all
human, and we all need to eat and feel safe,
to stand on soil we call home, to speak our mother
tongues, tell our grandparent stories,
and to feel the depth and caress of peace

Paula Green
20 May 2021