Poetry Planetariat

Abstract

Respect for Life and Dignity
What is poetry? To this question, France based Turkish poet Caroline
Laurent Turunc writes, ?I am the scream of every pain!? (?Poet of
Light?). A poet can lend the words to the pain, to the grief, which the real
victims are unable to. We know poetry has little power to end wars. But
we have a faith that poetry restores hope. Japanese poet Hiroko Mizuno
writes in her poem ?As a mother? what she feels about the children dying
in Gaza:
As a mother
I cannot let it pass through.
I cannot just ignore it.
Even if it is caused on the other side of the world,
even if it happens to someone I have never met,
it still stirs my heart as a mother.
Through poetry we hope to restore the scale of a human face. We are
witnessing the most difficult time in human history when the killers claim
to be the messiah of humanity and the victims are despised. Even if our
poetry cannot immediately intervene and alter the situation at the very
moment, we can bear witness to the human wrongs. We hope this is the
most crucial responsibility that a creative artist undertakes—to bear
witness with accountability for the future generations. Canada based
Palestinian poet Adam Yaghi takes this responsibility in his poem ?Witness with Me?:
I BEAR WITNESS to supremacist horrors.
I choke on my tears
— I can‘t breathe. . .
I BEAR WITNESS to a humanity denied;
In this issue, the poets have expressed their love for life and have urged
everyone to respect human dignity. Though they speak from different
parts of the world and in different languages, the crux of their poetic
expression remains the same—stop brutal killing of people in any pretext.
We know there are differences. But these differences have to be
treated with mutual respect. Life precedes any kind of ideology. No
identity, religion, or historical narrative can justify the systematic removal
of the conditions necessary for living. When these conditions disappear,
human existence is threatened. Poets speak as guardians to those who
have lost their voices.
Our expressions are collective defense of human life and dignity.
We insist on the value of each life and we refuse the arithmetic of wars.