Marsha Lederman writes in The Globe and Mail:
… I found it hard to compute that people were behind me, strolling with their ice creams and specialty coffees. That we are all just living here, as this is happening there.
This unsettling feeling is a recurring theme in a new Canadian poetry anthology. Poems in Response to Peril: An Anthology in Support of Ukraine was put together in less than three months by London, Ont.-based poet Penn Kemp and Richard-Yves Sitoski, who is poet laureate for Owen Sound, Ont.
In February on her blog, Kemp asked poets to respond to W.H. Auden’s famous quote (from his elegy for W.B. Yeats) that “poetry makes nothing happen.” Then she put out a call on social media. Dozens of poems came in, many of which appear in the anthology.
Some deal with that feeling of impotence, going on with life in Canada as war raged, such as Tanis MacDonald’s We lived Canadianly during the war. “We were unhappy during the war because our bandwidth was / low. Gas prices were up, and we were tired of masking,” it begins. “And when they bombed other people’s houses, we knew to / sigh and look sad.”
Kemp relates deeply to this feeling of powerlessness and frustration, but as for Auden’s provocation, she believes poetry can be an effective tool.
“It moves the heart,” she says. “And when the heart is moved, then action follows.”
The anthology’s first printing has sold out, raising about $4,000 for PEN Ukraine. A second printing is underway. Contributors have sent copies of the book to Ukrainian poets. And poets have been making videos of themselves reading their poem.
You can order the anthology for $30 plus postage from Richard-Yves Sitoski, r_sitoski@yahoo.ca.
Penn Kemp 