Call for Poetry Submissions

Call for Poetry Submissions

100 poems to celebrate the life of Ken Saro-Wiwa: a life of writing and activism.

Flipped Eye Publishing, as part of Remember Saro-Wiwa, is publishing an anthology of poems to commemorate the 10th anniversary of Ken Saro-Wiwa's execution on 10 November 1995. The anthology will be published on 10 November 2005.

"the writer cannot be a mere storyteller; he cannot be a mere teacher; he cannot merely X-ray society's weaknesses, its ills, its perils. He or she must be actively involved in shaping its present and its future." Ken Saro-Wiwa (1941-1995).

Biography

Ken Saro-Wiwa's career spanned teaching, business, government administration, writing and political leadership. It was these last two for which he became renowned, and eventually murdered. His writings included satirical novels, newspaper columns, children's tales, folk tales and the popular television play Basi & Co. - a long-running series of over 150 episodes. For many Africans, he epitomised a freedom fighter.

From 1990, Ken Saro-Wiwa led a movement in Ogoni for social and ecological justice. He used his writing and his boundless energy to unite the Ogoni behind a call for greater autonomy within the Nigerian Federation, access to oil revenues for the development of Ogoni, the right to protect Ogoni from ecological devastation and the right to preserve the Ogoni language. In November 1990, the Ogoni Bill of Rights was signed by most Ogoni chiefs and leaders. The Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (MOSOP) was also founded to pursue this agenda along the principles of non-violence.

Throughout the early 1990s Ken campaigned vigorously for MOSOP as its President and travelled internationally to bring the cause to the attention of the United Nations and the international community. In 1994, the government arrested Saro-Wiwa and thirteen other Ogoni accusing them of the murder of four Ogoni chiefs during rioting in May 1994 even though the evidence suggested that Saro-Wiwa and others were many miles away from the scene of the crime. On 30 October 1995, following a show trial denounced by international observers, Ken Saro-Wiwa and eight of the accused were found guilty and sentenced to hang. Despite massive international outcry, the sentence was carried out on 10 November 1995. After their execution, they became known as The Ogoni 9 and the campaign to clear their name continues.

Themes of poems for the anthology are:

Ken Saro-Wiwa: the Legacy

Freedom of expression; resistance (literary and otherwise); imprisonment; non-violence; political oppression; leadership.

Social and Ecological Justice

Minority rights; exile/displacement/refugees; war, peace, poverty, justice; equity; the death penalty; pollution; climate change; the right to appropriate/sustainable development; power (and the abuse thereof); capitalism and corporations.

Poets are encouraged to contribute under these topics as widely as possible, by considering people, place and power with both current and historical issues. We also want poems that consider positive and challenging futures in the light of these issues.

Previously published poems must be accompanied by permission to reprint. Poems should not exceed 80 (two pages) lines including stanza breaks.

Deadline: 30 June 2005. (Deadline will not be extended to ensure the book is published on due publications date of 10 November 2005)

Poetry submissions should be submitted electronically. Maximum of three poems per poet which must be embedded into the text of an e-mail. No attachments please. Attachments will be automatically deleted. Submissions should include your name, contact mailing address, email and telephone number and maximum 25-word bio. There is no payment for submissions. Royalties to go to The Ken Saro-Wiwa Foundation

Co-editors: Nii Ayikwei-Parkes and Kadija Sesay. Foreword : Ken Wiwa. Editorial advisor :Jack Mapanje

Send poetry submissions to:

[email protected]

Further information and updates can also be found at:

Flipped Eye Publishing

http://www.flippedeye.net/

Remember Saro-Wiwa

HYPERLINK "http://www.remembersarowiwa.org.uk/

Sable LitMag

"http://www.sablelitmag.org/submissions1.html

"http://www.africanwritersabroad.org.uk" http://www.africanwritersabroad.org.uk

Further Information on Ken Saro Wiwa and his legacy

Ken Saro-Wiwa was appalled at the devastation wrought on his homeland of Ogoni in the Niger Delta by the oil and gas industry. Led by the Anglo-Dutch multinational Shell, but also aided by the Nigerian state oil company and other multinationals such as BP, Chevron, Texaco, Exxon and Agip, the oil industry expropriated land, polluted land, water and air, wrecked the agricultural economy and put nothing back into the local economy. Only the elites in Lagos and foreign companies reaped the billion dollar profits of this filthy industry.

The Nigerian government reacted harshly to Ken bringing the cause to the attention of the United Nations and the international community. Villages were razed in Ogoni by the Nigerian military, by then under the dictatorship of General Sani Abacha. In 1993, the oil companies pulled out of Ogoni - in much the same way that colonial powers pulled out of Africa over 30 years before - in a hurry, leaving the land in a ruinous and environmental mess behind them. Very little has changed.

Saro-Wiwa always appealed for non-violent and peaceful action to further the Ogoni cause, referring to Gandhi for inspiration. The commemorative campaign, Remember Saro-Wiwa, in 2005, of which this anthology will be just one part, carries on Saro-Wiwa's demands, ten years after his execution, in the same non violent and peaceful spirit that he maintained.

http://archive.greenpeace.org/comms/ken/

http://homepage.oanet.com/jaywhy/ken.htm

http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/saro.htm