The past few years have seen a rapid rise in warspeak amongst political leaders, the rhetoric of belligerence and aggression, and the overwhelming ghosting of dissident voices. Peacespeak is the antidote to warspeak. The Ministries of Truth Tell Tales, tall and small. Doublethink doublecross. Newspeak is Nospeak at all. So here we are, a quarter century into the 21st Century, and the drums and chants of war rumble and mumble over the horizon of our ever-alert imagine nations.
PEACE ETC is the First-in-the-World picnic table with peace poetry laser-etched onto the tabletop. PEACE ETC will be an annual table curated by Wally Keeler. The call for submission of peace poems requests that they not be political, but poetical. This call will eventually to textpand other imagine nations, poets of other languages.
PEACE ETC has made its first appearance in Our Poemtown’s premier Victoria Park, ready to be read by thousands that swarm Victoria Park on Canada Day, every summer day after day. 24/7.
Next year this table will be replaced with a new PEACE ETC picnic table, and the first one will be retired to Our Poemtown’s Peace Park, where they will accumulate until there is peace, rapprochement, detente, binding treaties, that kind of stuff otherwise known in the glorious imagine nation of the Peoples Republic of Poetry, as dipoemacy. It is implemented by the Poetburo in the interests of the Poetariet.
Peace Park is located looking over Cobourg Creek as it lyrically winds into a great lake, the scene is serene, where peace prevails. Bunches of birds use its still waters for shelter and breeding. Peace Park was so-named back in the mid-80s, after a group of Cobourg peace activists had lobbied Town Council. PICNIC ON POETRY will request that all PEACE ETC picnic tables be retired in the serenity of Peace Park, a park that had no voice other than its name, will soon have many voices of poetic peacespeak.
PICNIC ON POETRY is honoured with a great line-up of contributing poets for the First-of-its-Kind-in-the-World picnic table with peace poems laser-etched into the tabletop. It is also a great line-up of poetry, tabletop poetry, foods for thoughts. Check out the brief textcerpts below:
“Go, gather up the love
I know now what we must do
It is in your eyes and my eyes
Go, and gather it up, look by look
gaze by gaze”
“Peace when you’re home
And the only beating is that of your heart”
“whatever side of whatever fence you
are on, whether we agree or disagree
or agree to disagree, we all must find
the way to peace.”
“beneath the poppies row on row the buried
soldiers do not dream of torches passed
someone’s homeland up in flames no, they rest
within the dreams in which they fell forever”
“not war brides but peace brides
not war babies but peace babies
not going to war
but
going to
peace”
“what a world this world would be
where i'd need you and you'd need me
and everyone we met would smile
and call us "friend",
if we hurry, we'll just make it,
change the world before they break it”
“Calm came clear
of cloud
early one morning
before things started”