Waging Peace

Poetry and Political Action

Edited by Susan McMaster

6 X 9 inches, 144 pages
colour plates, photos, poetry

CAN A POEM STOP A BULLET? The 100-plus contributors to Waging Peace: Poetry and Political Action offer hope. To mark 2001, the first year of the millennium, poets and artists from across Canada donated art-wrapped poems on peace to every MP and Senator, as an encouragement of their work for peace in Canada and abroad. The poems and art were published first in Convergence: Poems for Peace as broadsheets and a limited boxed edition. Now they have been offered by the creators to Waging Peace, on the understanding that Penumbra Press is donating all royalties to peace education.

Waging Peace collects 55 poems, including some in French, Hungarian, Dutch, Kurdish, Hebrew, Michif, and German, along with 32 full-colour reproductions. Essays on poetry and politics by Senator Jerry Grafstein, sponsor of the Poet Laureate, and by respected poets Sarah Klassen, Colin Morton, Heather Spears (Governor-General's award winner), and Roger Nash (past-president, League of Canadian Poets), are illustrated with photos and portraits by Heather Spears. An introduction by poet Susan McMaster, the originator of the project and editor of the book, completes the Convergence story.

This beautiful, moving book is truly a community project. It confirms the wide and practical commitment of Canadians to building a more peaceful, fruitful world for ourselves and our children. Educators at the senior secondary and college level will find it a thought-provoking resource.

Words cannot stop a bullet; but a person who hears them, and ponders, may.