This week we welcome one of our participants at Read Write Poem who will be joining our prompt team.

At fourteen Ren Powell read Helen Hayes’ admission of having misinterpreted: “And the Word was God”. Feeling a kinship with Hayes - an awe of the power of words - Ren swapped her teen-angst poems for playwrighting. To feed herself, she worked with baboons, baked and taught. Translation led her back to poetry. Some of her own poetry has been translated into six languages. Ren helped establish the International Cities of Refuge Network, and is currently the editor of Babel Fruit and ProtestPoems.org. She is working on her Creative Writing doctorate: a haibun collection with a long, pretentious title.

Ren will be suggesting prompts that look at human rights and international literature.

* * *

Since this is my first time to suggest a prompt, I thought I’d let everyone know where I am coming from:

A friend of mine, a poet, told me when I established ProtestPoems.org that I was brave to do what I do. I didn’t understand why she would say that. I am not brave. In fact, I protest the infringement of human rights out of fear.

First they came for the Jews

First they came for the Jews
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for the Communists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Communist.
Then they came for the trade unionists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for me
and there was no one left
to speak out for me.

~Pastor Martin Niemöller

If I lived in Baghdad, if I lived in Tehran or Bogotá, would I be brave? No one can be certain what he or she would do in that kind of a situation. But everything I know about myself tells me “no.” I would be selfish and desperate.

Here it is highly unlikely that anyone will come knocking at my door to call me off-color names, much less. . . Well, much less. In the last few years I have gone from being cynical in regard to petitions and rallies, to being a fervent idealist, to being disillusioned - yet convinced more than ever of the practical effects of activism. And the power of the written word.

I am an apolitical person. I don’t even pretend to know anything about Columbian politics, but I know there are journalists in prison for writing what they know and feel about it. So, from the safety of my little village cottage, I politely, but firmly, knock on a virtual door in Columbia and say, “Hey. You know, they have a right to speak their mind.”

This week’s prompt is to write a poem that speaks for someone who cannot speak for himself/herself. Write to speak for the miners of China. Or give voice to a mute Senegalese child’s love of babobab juice. Or an ant’s astonishment over the power of the big toe before it (you might even unwittingly stumble into satire).

I believe that, ultimately, all poetry speaks of our human values – humor being one of them. Can’t wait to hear who you speak for!

~Ren.

(Please consider looking at ProtestPoems.org , as the current call for poems is for those that speak for women whose human rights are not respected.)

* * *

The copyright holders of “First They Came for the Jews” cannot be traced. Additional information on the poem’s origins can be found by following the poem’s link.

* * *

Come back after midnight next Sunday night for the get your poem on post to link your own poem giving voice.