NZ Launch of Poetry in Wartime Film

POETIC NEWS

Third Wellington International Poetry Festival 3 -6 November 2005

FEATURING EVENTS IN 2005: The N.Z launch of the Poetry in Wartime / Voices in War Time Film

Admission Free

Saturday November 5 at 12:15 p.m. Soundings Theatre/Te Papa.

Introduced by Sam Hamill with discussion time after the screening.

This film is a feature-length documentary that uses powerful images and the words of poets (unknown and world-famous) to help us all understand the experience of war. In addition to the testimony of poets, soldiers, journalists, historians and experts on combat add diverse perspectives on war's effects on soldiers, civilians and society.

Poet Sam Hamill

Hamill has been in the news recently for his work with "Poets Against the War," whose mission is to "...continue the tradition of socially engaged poetry by creating venues for poetry as a voice against war, tyranny and oppression." Hamill is the author of 14 volumes of original poetry including Almost Paradise: Selected Poems & Translations, Dumb Luck, Gratitude, and Destination Zero: Poems 1970-1995. He has also published three collections of essays, including A Poetís Work, and two dozen volumes translated from ancient Greek, Latin, Estonian, Japanese, and Chinese, most recently, Tao Te Ching, The Essential Chuang Tzu and The Poetry of Zen (with J.P. Seaton), Narrow Road to the Interior & Other Writings of Basho, and Crossing the Yellow River: Three Hundred Poems from the Chinese. He is Founding Editor of Copper Canyon Press, serving as editor from 1972 through 2004. In January 2003, he founded Poets Against War, compiling the largest single-theme anthology in history, and editing a best-selling selection, Poets Against the War. His work has been translated into more than a dozen languages.

Hamill has taught in prisons for 14 years, in artist-in-residency programs for 20 years, and has worked extensively with battered woman and children.

He has been the recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Guggenheim Foundation, the Woodrow Wilson Foundation, the Mellon Fund, the U.S.-Japan Friendship Commission, two Washington Governorís Arts Awards, the Stanley Lindberg Lifetime Achievement Award for Editing, and the Washington Poets Association Lifetime Achievement Award for poetry.

ENDS

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