Poetry of Witness

 ‘ […]  is a place of resistance and struggle, 
where books are published, poems read, and 
protest disseminated. It is the sphere in which 
claims against the political order are made 
in the name of justice'. 
Professor Carolyn Forché

http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/poets/a_f/forche/witness.html 



'Poetry of Witness emerges from concerns that cannot be defined as exclusively private or public. Professor Carolyn Forché 
collected poems written by those who suffered war, imprisonment, military occupation, house arrest, forced exile, and political repression to produce the global anthology Against Forgetting: Twentieth-Century Poetry of Witness (W.W. Norton, 1993). It is democratic poetry written and read as an act of witness and testimony to the lived experiences of trauma. It is written by poets who are compelled to honour those without a voice. Those who must be heard. Its concerns are global, national and local.

This site is dedicated to the sharing and dissemination of this sort of work with an active engagement across communities which in the forthcoming months and years will curate events, podcasts and social activism'.



-  Dr Jo Clement.