This April, National Poetry Month Newsletter, The Banished Poets Society honours the power and passion of poetry to influence and impact the world with hope of transformation into peace and justice for every culture, every part of society.
We salute George Elliott Clarke for his dedication to promote black culture in poetry and music. We note with pride that the first black astronaut went on the moon voyage, accompanied by a skillful woman and an astronaut wearing the indigenous wisdom of the cosmos, insignia embroidered on his jacket, examples of the equality of all cultures, the wondrous aspects of humanity seeing the dark side of the moon for the first time. They showed us a radiant Earth, pure poetry in cosmic music.
This issue includes poetry from Italy, Israel, the U.S. many great Canadian poets and emerging poets from a variety of backgrounds who have found herein a platform to express past suppression, present hopes of healing and esteem.
All reflect on the beautiful vulnerable humanity we all share, our growing recognition of evil politics that threaten liberty and life for so many. Speaking out now against cruelty and injustice we save democracy, we help to transform the Earth into its glorious potential.
-Katherine L. Gordon. Editor. April, 2026
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Transcendence
We have seen the glowing Earth
from the dark side of the moon,
rare, beautiful, worthy of cherishing,
though its ancient dust no longer undisturbed
or home to quiet craters of possibility
but a frantic mix of bombs, bodies
poverty and fear
held hostage to the evil policies of tyrants.
Trump, Netanyahu, Putin, the evil trinity eclipsing democracy.
Yet the people are rising
from the mountains and valleys
the deserts and plains, the sea-shores, the forests,
discovering that voices joined can change the world.
This is the power of united human courage,
poetry and passion, the music of the cosmos
vibrating in waves that shape the future.
A new era of transcendence is born.
-Katherine L. Gordon
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Gaza City
Across the water
across the bobbing,
yellow-striped fishing boats
in the long late light—
we see the gold of Gaza City,
sitting on the Mediterranean—
its sandstone minarets,
concrete apartment blocks,
Byzantine architecture.
And now more war is coming,
bringing with it the weapon
of enforced starvation.
Omar Mukhtar Street,
is soon to be blanketed
with the gray powder
of exploded and collapsed buildings.
Soon to be
like the rest of Gaza, where
we see tens of thousands
of the strewn dead,
of whom other thousands
are children. And
other thousands of children
are amputees—
maimed children
wander in the dust,
maimed children,
wandering
in the dust.
-Gene Grabiner
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Shimmer and Slime
I have strolled down paths
aglow with marigold shimmer,
breathed in the tang of forever friends
who've wandered along with me...
side-stepped cracked
and broken culverts
skulking along the edges,
their scent of brackish water
as they seek their reflections at all costs.
Marigolds are not famously fragrant,
but their scent is one of honesty.
- B. Alexander
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Washing Bananas
I want to tell you
how washing bananas is like
writing a poem
but the truth is
more complicated than that
I watch a woman
working in the factory noise
in Costa Rica
music blaring over loud speakers
roaring in the air
like midnight torture in a American prison
at Guantanamo Bay
and she moves the bone machine
of her body
dipping her arms
in the banana-floating water
that washes the yellow crop
with drippings of shipwrecked berries
in clutchable bunches
gripping each rinsed cluster
and lashing them one by one
into plastic baskets she pulls and shove
pulls and shoves
thereby filling her quota
she’s dressed in a rubber bib
running past her knees
her hands gloved to the elbow
a costermonger of the daily harvest
she’s a cog and wheel of the human spirit
paid by the dreary hour
of each dolorous day
the greengrocer’s serf and slave
-John B. Lee
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Dominion Day in Jail
(celebration 1975)
I spent last Dominion Day in jail
in a cold cell
on a steel bench -
cold, sleepless, angry and proud
tho almost wanting to feel foolish.
Fed a cheeseburger and a coffee in 24 hours
fingerprinted
stripped of my shirt
frogmarched - mugshot
insulted.
All this for the patriotic crime
of daring to say YANKEE GO HOME!
to the Yankee Shriners
parading thru downtown Toronto.
They thought it was the 4th of July
(Canada Division).
Cold, sleepless, hungry, angry
PROUD
that I was cold, sleepless, hungry, angry
and not enjoying the July sun
lounging on the green grass in Queen's Park
or lining the parade route for the Shriners.
This growing pride made my solitary jail cell
a celebration of Dominion Day.
-Chris Faiers
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Grave Digger, or Not Another Ode
About the Trees
I’ve learned I’ve
pondered the trees
in a fallacious way.
Yes, I’m aware
the poets gorge
on oak & ash.
A sycamore is less.
Their buds outnumber
the sand.
But all this time their
branches have been
roots—roots have been
their scions—
stretching to a
sacrilege of light,
the undertow of earth.
This is why the
moles are nearly blind.
Treasure at the
bottom of abyss.
Squinting’s a game
for the quick
& not the dead.
Who decides what’s sky?
Behold the flight of worms.
Our grandson
stomps on leaves
to hear the crunching of
their bones. This is something
beauty cannot offer. Supple’s
invariably soundless—
which only the deaf can hear.
A surface
yet to wrinkle
hasn’t lived. To wither
is to feel the
sigh of God. There
below the stratum.
Every stone a star.
The basis for why
you’ll stop at six feet
down. Why you’ll roll
your beloved over
once the mourners
sob & flee. Her dreams had
always burrowed never
soared. Your shovel
like a staff
that splits the sea.
-Andreas Gripp
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Rise Of The Hydra
We have been driven
deep into the heart of our yearning, . . .
— Robert Duncan
Another spring-tide is threatened by war —
war follows war as far back as memory lasts:
Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan,
Iraq, and now Iran. Maybe Cuba’s next?
And still, human longing for peace persists.
Today, government thugs in black masks
beat and murder civilians, merely citizens
who only desire freedom from violence.
In this game there can be no winners;
we will all be losers, or even dead.
Six decades ago, Robert Duncan
saw the Hydra break loose destroying
bridges, temples, schools, rice fields,
entire villages — entire villages.
An ancient people faced the utter
destitution of years of war.
The young women and men who believed
they could stop the killing displayed
a raw courage and a truth that created
a green place within the blind earth,
a calm centre in the hurricane of fear.
And yet the United States has resumed
the slaughter of the innocents,
the reign of wrath.
How often will Herod return
to inhabit the White House?
School girls are hunted down in their classrooms,
deserts have been turned into mass graves.
As Ramadan and Lent fall together,
waves of bombers thunder overhead.
A whole region is laid waste.
How many times must the Hydra rise?
With each new war we are driven ever deeper
into the heart of our yearning, deeper
into our desperation for true brotherhood.
We seem to have been fighting the Death Cult
for generations, fighting the servants of evil
forever. The sky’s aflame over the Persian Gulf.
Outside, months of snow have been replaced by rain;
we hunger for the new life we pray spring will bring.
-James Deahl
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Mother Wise
i
Soft earth opens like a woman.
Bulbs crown from her thighs
and bloom.
Fish swim from the river’s hips.
But Mama is so small
I am born of a wound.
ii
In a womb of time
the midwives lay
their hands on my twins’ damp heads.
They will bury the placenta
in the herb garden.
Its fine hairs will sprout
from the earth’s skin.
Excerpts from Good Grief
Shortlisted for the Next Generation Indie Book Awards
and the Global Book Awards
- April Bulmer
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War Effects
Child wanders in hunger
this is not what life should be
She looks to nearby adults
does not understand differences
Food must come from somewhere
plentiful on shelves, not UN Aid boxes
Enjoyment is not known to child
only suffering amidst war rubble
How dare nutrition is not available
even worse as a tool of ultimate power
Primary school should be for education
not as a missile or drone target
The word ‘War’ to stay in dictionaries
What happened to classmates and teachers
her playground to enjoy recess
Rubble and dust landscape
broken in wonderment
Friends spontaneously cry
over friends to never see again
Someday, when this is over
reunions will have somber moods
Adult recollections of this disaster
will forever need illness treatment
- Ed Woods
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Lament for a Homeland
After Edwin Muir
The anguish of plane engines in the night
heading to one of our never-ending wars
shatters our dreams; nightly we hear them roar,
rumble like thunder, fade
sound-smeared into the sky. Why? What has made
this land so plagued, its promise unfulfilled,
afraid of yet impatient for its doom,
unable to make room
enough between the river and the sea
for both to share? Must it forever be
all mine or only yours?
We were beguiled
like refugees returning to a lost isle
by the mirage of a land, that once was ours,
of milk and honey, eager to drink our fill;
we were betrayed
by decades of assumptions wrongly made
finding not sweetness there, but bitter gall,
the milk and honey turned to blood and dust;
considering ourselves just, we did not heed
the prophets warning us of future ills,
telling us milk will curdle, honey clot,
fruit slashed with swords will rot
our silos will be empty in time of need;
we, who through millennia never forgot
this land, imagined they,
its later conquerors, would fade away
quietly, or let us in without a fight.
While they believed
false prophets who urged them to savage deeds
for decades taught their children to hate, to kill
and do so still.
Extremists on both sides have sown this seed.
Beguiled by We are right,
betrayed by those who promised We will win,
no need to compromise,
ignoring even now the words of the wise,
both sides, lying awake in darkness, hear
over and over, these last hundred years
the anguish of plane engines in the night.
-Judy Koren
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Green to Heal
Time does not pass
In this garden of citrus and thyme
With a sprinkling of dove
And sunbird
Where anemones thrive
And a blackbird praises Spring
And greens
The colour of calm and healing
Greens that ease
The pain of war…
-Helen Bar-Lev
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For March 1
Oh, Love, we were bubbles
In the flotsam of time
Part of this river
Part of some rhyme
All promises fulfilled
All projects on hold
We had so many rivers
Before we grew old
The March wind was singing
Some wild hero’s song
The canoe was ready
The evenings grew long
And now we’re a couplet
In the epic of time
We followed our rivers
To the end of our rhyme
All dreams and all rivers
To the end of our rhyme
- Lenny Everson
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APPEAL TO POETS
Poets, come out of your closets,
open your windows, open your doors,
you have been holed-up too long
in your closed worlds.
Lawrence Ferlinghetti - Populist Manifesto
Poets, let’s write words of Hope
for every country at war
where homes collapse,
like sandcastles at high tide,
where
an opaque veil
fills the air
and eyes are full of terror
where
children’s laughter
is too often silenced….
Poets, let’s spread words of Peace
on the far horizon
there is a promise,
waiting to bloom.
-Lidia Chiarelli
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Gift of India
gift of india
gift of bones
gift of colour in the trees
silver round the ankles
glass around the wrist
dust in cloudy eyes, and
clouds, themselves, like
ash
i asked my eyes
they sang inward, nameless tunes
my ears rang dry
through all the drenching dazzling afternoons
i asked for nothing
but to crouch within
the crowds
the feet trampling
the dust below
the clouds above
the music of the anklets
set a ringing and a numbing
while the heat-dazed insects
stared
i asked no gift,
but it was given anyway
for the sound of the cicadas
for the smell of tamarind and tangy urine
for the incense toiling upward
for the small waxy flowers
with no voices
for the mindless march of feet
beating even in the rain
they have taken all my
numbers
and the letters of my
name
and given me these
inward eyes,
overcast and tuneless
like the eyes of the beggars
in the
lanes
-kymme sun
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Transformation
Nature in eternal cycle, greens the Earth
rainbows her fields with flowers
buds fruit trees with promise of sustenance.
Poets transform war-burdened lands
with hope and forceful voices
visioning equality of justice, truth and sharing.
Speak your protests, embrace every culture,
all the dispossessed and weary.
Together we create transformation.
-Katherine L. Gordon
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