BOSTON (AP) – America’s leading poets are averse to Donald Trump, and they’re not about to go gentle into that good night.
Poetry slams and other literary events are being organized nationwide in the run-up to the president-elect’s Jan. 20 inauguration.
Some, like this weekend’s “Writers Resist” rallies in New York, Boston and 90 other U.S. cities, are overtly in protest. Others are merely an attempt to find a little solace and beauty in verse.
“Our country was founded on brilliant writing,” said Erin Belieu, an award-winning poet who runs the creative writing program at Florida State University. She hatched the Writers Resist movement “to re-inaugurate the best of our democratic ideals.”
On Sunday, poets, writers and artists will gather in 32 states – as well as in Amsterdam, Hong Kong, London and Singapore – to read aloud from their own works and quote inspirational passages from others.