|
In Fiesta!, Foreign Policy In Focus looks at the intersection of culture and foreign policy.
 |
The Church says: The body is a sin.
Science says: The body is a machine.
Advertising says: The body is a business.
The body says: I am a fiesta.
Eduardo Galeano, excerpt from "Window on the Body"
|
Frances Payne Adler, "Dear Legislators": Where to find the funds for health care reform? Sometimes the answer can be found in a poem.
John Perra, in From Killing Field to Field of Dreams, writes about Joe Cook's vision: Build a field in Cambodia and they will come.
"When I was Torn by War": Sinan Antoon, in this poem, reflects on the repercussions of conflict.
The European Loser: Bosnian artist Damir Niksic specializes in bringing excluded voices into the art world.
Protests continue in a virtual world where security police and censors are unable to tread, writes Max Burns in The Iranian Opposition's Second Life.
Poems Against the Regime: Persis M. Karim, Sholeh Wolpe, and Roger Sedarat write about protests, images, and a fallen demonstrator.
Demystifying Iran: Noor Iqbal interviews Miryam Habibian, director of The Mist, a new documentary that shows that beneath the fog of politics, Iran has a vibrant youth and art culture.
Ethan Pack, Muslim Voices: Islam is far from monolithic. A recent arts and ideas festival in New York proves the point.
"Three Gifts": Majid Naficy, a poet from Iran, remembers someone for whom time ran out too soon.
First-prize winner of the Split This Rock poetry contest Teresa Scollon, in the poem "River, Page," shows that a river can be a lifeline for refugees, or it can be just another line of sorrow in a story.
"The Center for the Intrepid," a poem by second-prize winner Jenny Browne, shows that the war's casualties are measured in more than broken bodies.
In the poem "Feminicide/Fimincidio," third-prize winner Demetrice Anntía Worley reflects on the murdered and disappeared women of Ciudad Juárez, México.
Science Fiction From Below: Mark Engler interviews Alex Rivera, director of the new film Sleep Dealer, where he imagines the future of the Global South.
The provocative work of German-born artist Andrea Geyer makes us confront our responsibility as citizens. Niels Van Tomme interviews Geyer in Poetic Document Making.
In this video, taken from the 2008 Split This Rock poetry festival, Naomi Ayala reads her poem "Within Me."
Farrah Hassen gives us a look at the March 26, 2009 Washington DC tour stop of British artist Jeremy Deller's "It Is What It Is: Conversations about Iraq," in the video at left. Part two of the presentation can be found here.
Dayl Wise is a Vietnam veteran, a poet, and editor of two collections of veteran poetry. Kathryn Zickuhr asks him his views on war and literature in Veterans and Poetry.
Dayl also lets loose the dogs of war through his poem, "Walking My Dog While at War."
Trevor Paglen talks with Niels Van Tomme about the art of documenting that which does not want to be documented in Seeing Things.
Waltz with Bashir might not change Israeli politics, but it is a powerful antiwar movie nonetheless, writes Farrah Hassen in her film review A Waltz for the War-Weary.
Ethan Pack observes in The War Online that the recent war in Gaza was also waged online, but with an important difference: People were talking to each other and sometimes even listening.
Ultra-red makes art at the speed of sound. Neils Van Tomme interviews a co-creator of the organization in Radical Sound Activism.
Sitting in judgment at a drug smuggling case, a juror reflects on homeland security in Susan Brennan's poem "Indictment — Grand Jury Duty."
Iranian poet Farideh Hassanzadeh-Mostafavi faces down fear of war with a poem that explores the difference between coming to her home as a visitor and coming to her home as a soldier, in "From an Iranian Mother to an American Mother."
Runaway military spending meets runway anti-military clothing: a new way of looking at the fashioning of war. Christine Ahn and Gwyn Kirk write about creative activism in Fashioning Resistance to Militarism.
Let's devote 1% of the stimulus package to the arts and let's go global with it, say Melissa Tuckey and John Feffer in From Arms to Art.
In the poem "Scarecrow," Fady Joudah places the reader in the position of war refugee. "When it happens," he writes, "there will be no time to look for anyone."
Kathy Engel's poem "Inaugural" names and claims this moment of change, not just as change happening in the White House but as "a time to protect, a time to risk, a time to poet," a "time to imagine big things." E. Ethelbert Miller interviews Engel on her thoughts about the poem and the new era.
Michael Rosen recently read his poem "In Gaza" at a rally in the UK to stop the violence in Gaza. The poem is war's cruel address to children, "In Gaza, children/ you learn, that the sky kills/and houses hurt."
Kyi May Kaung interviews Vietnamese-born artist Huong, who has created an immense mural that depicts the horror of war and the imperative of peace.
Poet Kyle Dargan takes us on a bombing mission in Pilot to Bombardier.
Laotian Americans are recapturing their experiences and memories through a remarkable set of illustrations, writes Channapha Khamvongsa in Drawing the Future from the Past.
Visual artist Daniel Heyman talks about his new exhibit on the representation of torture in the Iraq War.
Mark Vallen interviews artists Guy Colwell, Stephen Fredericks, Juan Fuentes, and Art Hazelwood about a new exhibit on the socially conscious art movement in The Art of Democracy.
Poet Naomi Shihab Nye talks about Palestinian culture and how a poetic voice can be a country unto itself.
Genocide is horrifying, but it's not always a black-and-white issue, as Frankie Sturm explains in Picturing Genocide.
Music can change hearts and minds, and help bring down empires, writes Stephen Zunes in Estonia's Singing Revolution.
On the 100th anniversary of Richard Wright's birth, E. Ethelbert Miller interviews three scholars on the writer's take on Africa and colonialism.
The peace sign turns 50 this year. Barry Miles describes the origins of what has become a nearly universal symbol.
E. Ethelbert Miller talks with R. Victoria Arana about new black literature in Britain and its take on empire.
In the poem Possibility, Frances Payne Adler reflects on life after the closure of a military base.
John Feffer talks about efforts to build a monument to the Iraqi civilians who have died.
A recent exhibition shows that the illustrator's pen is mightier than the sword, writes Mark Vallen in Illustrating War.
From March 20 to 23, poets from around the country will gather in Washinton, DC for the Split This Rock poetry festival. This historic event calls poets to a greater role in public life and will bring the vital, important, challenging poetry of witness that is being written by American poets today to a larger and more diverse audience.
As part of FPIF's ongoing coverage of this important event, Sarah Browning in Hear This Hammer Ring explains how poets are coming to Washington to hammer home a message and hammer out a new poetic vision for America in the world.
Poems
In her poem "Prelude," Kathy Engel takes us from Nicaragua to the West Bank to the South Bronx, as she explains a new counter-terrorism approach.
In the poems "Aziz" and "In the News," award-winning author Naomi Shihab Nye remembers her father, a Palestinian forced out of his home in Jerusalem in 1948.
In vigil (2): Lee Sharkey describes a tense exchange at a silent peace gathering.
American Ghazals: Susan Tichy reflects on what we think about when we think about war.
Sublime: Christi Kramer compares the lives of one who leaves and one who stays behind.
2008 was a breakthrough year for musicians fighting the good fight. Check out the following 10 albums, which Foreign Policy In Focus recommends for your end-of-the-year celebrations.
With words and pictures, artist Ellen O'Grady tells a story from the Occupied Territories.
Carmela Cruz talks with acclaimed war photographer Philip Jones Griffith about photography, Vietnam, and the relationship between art and media.
E. Ethelbert Miller talks with Edwidge Danticat about her new memoir, U.S. immigration law, and U.S.-Haitian relations.
Distance once increased the value of food. John Feffer asks whether the local food movement has changed all that.
At the Istanbul Biennale, antiwar artists shock and awe, but why is their work so alluring?
E. Ethelbert Miller talks to novelist Anya Achtenberg about Cambodia, memory, and the lives of others.
Novels about Burma are all the rage. Kyi May Kaung discusses the Burmese novels that you haven't read yet.
The Japanese American writer David Mura talks with E. Ethelbert Miller about Asia, racism, and the foreign policy of Minnesota.
Do North Korean films ultimately reveal or conceal the reality of the famously closed society?
Iranian poet Farideh Hassanzadeh talks about war, loss, and the politics of poetry.
"Isn't It Enough?" A poem by Farideh Hassanzadeh.
Poet and educator Kalamu ya Salaam talks with E. Ethelbert Miller about Hurricane Katrina, war, and geopolitics.
Bruce Springsteen belts out an old peace movement standard.
Aaron Hughes, Iraq War Veteran and artist, shares his work, a "tourist photograph from Iraq."
E. Ethelbert Miller talks with poet Martin Espada about the rainforest of Puerto Rico, the shantytowns of Nicaragua, and the poetry of Pablo Neruda.
"Jorge the Church Janitor Finally Quits," A poem by Martin Espada.
E. Ethelbert Miller talks to poet Melissa Tuckey about the Iraq War and the poetics of demonstrations.
Full Snow Moon, a poem by Melissa Tuckey.
The American Portrait Gallery's exploration of the presidency and the Cold War reveals a deep longing for a man with a plan.
The Spy Museum's message: we needed spooks during the Cold War and we need them now more than ever. But what's missing from the exhibits?
Iran recently held a cartoon contest on the Holocaust. The winning entry was a graphic surprise.
A heavy metal band uses music to educate about a genocide from the beginning of the last century.
E. Ethelbert Miller talks to Anan Ameri about Jimmy Carter and Arab American art.
Ian Williams explains why rum is the true global spirit, with its warm beating heart in the Caribbean.
Despite the admirable efforts of its director and the enthusiastic response of crowds, the new and controversial musical Yoduk Story is not likely to be the next Broadway hit.
The world's cup vast repository of cultural brewing capital is under attack by global corporations.
The First World War brought on a new and revolutionary kind of art. The Dada aesthetic rose out of the depths of a world lost in madness and murder. Now, disgust with the war in Iraq has sparked another revival of the Dada aesthetic.
|
