Local poets, residents speak out for peace

By Leigh Wilkerson

What happens when two local poets feel the need to speak out for peace in the world? They organize a grassroots event and invite all of Western North Carolina to speak out too. Asheville poets Mendy Knott and David Schenck invite everyone to share their voices at Let the Mountains Ring: Voices for Peace on Friday, May 10, 11am to 9pm at the Asheville City-County Plaza.

I interviewed Schenck and Knott this week about the event.

AGR: Why should everyday people get up at a public event and talk about peace?

Schenck: It is the peoples of the world -- as opposed to those who govern the peoples -- that always want peace. It is the job of the people to speak out against rulers who try to stampede them into wars. Without the voice of the people, rulers have free reign to wage war. In true democracy, it is the voice of the people that rules. But clearly this can only happen when people are willing to speak up, to speak up and demand that their voices be heard. Only then does democracy actually exist. So we speak up not only to work for peace, but to make democracy real.

AGR: You are both poets, so what is the poet’s role in changing the world?

Knott: Each poet has her or his own place and purpose in this world. Some write in the privacy of their rooms and send the poems out to be published and read in the world. Some stand up at an open mic and read them to their community—something I hope we have a lot of on May 10. Some may only share their words with a lover or with friends. As for me, I must not only speak my peace, I must encourage others to speak theirs as
well ...

I’m working on a poem called “Who” and the first couple of lines go: “Who will stop the killing if our world leaders won’t?/ I hear it whispered on the wind, ‘The people will...or nobody will, if the people don’t.’” The people. It’s up to us, not them. We have to quit saying the word “they” and start saying “we.” We gotta get active and stop saying ‘should’ and start saying “will.” Not “they should” but “we will.” It is our will, the will of the people, that there be an end to war and we will work for peace until we have it, or there’s no one left to work.

Schenck: We live what we dream. If we are to have peace, we must dream deeply of peace -- seek peace, intend peace, bespeak peace. All this is the work of the poet that lives in every person. ...

AGR: Speaking of dreams, Mendy described the idea for this event as arriving in a dream. Was that your inspiration?

Knott: I did have a dream and I do think that is a job for poets -- dreaming and recording and acting on their dreams. I woke from that dream at 4:30 am and wrote furiously -- and I mean that literally -- for two solid hours ... I was so angry at the silence surrounding the war in Afghanistan, the one threatening to spill over into Iran, the Philippines, Korea. More and more it was beginning to look like the war that would not end. And there was all this cheering the president on. Whoa!

I kept asking people, where are the hippies from the Vietnam era? We’re not all dead yet. We remember how to do this. Surely we are not all stuck behind big screen TV’s or out cruising in our SUVs. I wanted to yell, “Hey! Wake up everybody! I found that SILENCE excruciating. So I decided I would do something about it even if it meant standing alone in Pack Square reading my poems and crying out against war until I was hoarse and had no voice left.

AGR: Who do the two of you hope will come to listen and speak on May 10?

Knott: Why, everybody, of course. I especially want mothers and kids to come. For one thing, it’s Mother’s Day weekend, and who can feel more strongly than mothers and grandmothers that their children should be safe from the threat of war? What mother will be okay if her sons and daughters are drafted into the military to be sent away to kill or be killed? How do the mothers of children in Palestine, say, feel when their children are cut down in front of them? How about mothers of children who are starving? Or grandmothers of those who have been poisoned by industrial waste, whose descendants are no longer whole or healthy? So, mothers and children for sure, whose words and wishes are so simple and so sane, how can we fail to hear them?

But I want the businessman, too. The guy just on his way to lunch who hasn’t given the idea of peace a passing thought. Who is simply “too busy” with his own life to think about these things. And I want the kids from the streets to come and do a rap, play their street songs, tell us what peace means to them. I want environmentalists who can speak about peace toward the planet, and civil rights activists who will speak about peace between peoples, and healers who will tell us about peace in the body, and spiritual and religious leaders who may escort us to a place inside our souls where peace can be found and who teach respect for all forms of worship by their own example. I’m asking the poets and music-makers and anyone who wants, needs to say a few words. The elders, the children, all colors, all religions, every lifestyle, all dreamers are welcome. Remember the sermon on the mount when Jesus said, “Blessed are the peacemakers for they shall be called sons (and daughters) of God.” All God’s children, then, can be peacemakers. Let ‘em all come.

Schenck: I’m hoping that we see lots of people who haven’t yet spoken out against the war, against the racial discrimination that’s now disguised as patriotism, against the rising tide of fascism that is moving in this country. I’m hoping we have lots of poets, of musicians, of people just finding the poet or the prophet in themselves. And I’m pleased we have some recognized voices in the community as well—people who have spoken out before against injustice and greed and who will do so again and again. It’s this combination that makes for a most powerful witness for peace.