World Poetry Canada International Peace Festival News!

Cover photo

Ariadne’s notes.

The Vision:

The idea for this year’s theme began with a dream vision which included the transformation of the ancient chains of greed, anger, fear, power and despair dissolving into images of people from all the countries on earth, holding hands and glowing with the brightness of respect, friendship, love and peace.  It is my hope that the festival will achieve the vision. Like all of our festivals, it runs on the currency of love, faith and hopes which is the most precious of all. May 25-26^th, Richmond Cultural Centre, Richmond, BC, Canada. We will also be having four other events during the month of May.

Future project:
After many years of doing research on the brain, I have come to the conclusion that the brain is hard wired for fight or flee patterns but does not have one for peace.  Certainly the the fight or flee responses are needed and valid to keep the survival of the human race.  However, the possibility that Peace is an acquired skill which can be learned is perhaps something that can be looked at in the future through courses and other learning materials. I would be interested in working on this with others.

The World Poetry e-anthology.
It was decided to create a free World Poetry Peace e-anthology as a legacy of the festival.  This gift could be downloaded by all the people in the world.  We would like to thank Yilin Wang and Kimberly Tsan from the WP Youth team for volunteering to assemble and do the initial editing. Final Editing will be done by WP Director Anita Aguirre Nieveras and the e-book will be formatted by WP Director Heidi Mueller. The award winning Photographer Ang Jaypee Belarmino created the cover for us, donating the images for the project. With his permission, I am enclosing his comments and two images in this posting

 “I’m finally done with our cover photo for the E-Anthology. I sent 2 files of the same photo – 1 photo having a caption and the other photo without a caption, so that our Youth Team can freely put any caption on it. Kindly just choose from any of those 2 files. Just a little blurb about our cover design: I chose a child holding a globe as our cover. It signifies our theme that indeed, Peace is a step closer because it is now just a generation away. Mahatma Gandhi once said, “If we are to teach real peace in this world, we shall have to begin with children.”  I believe that by teaching these children effectively, one new generation coming is enough to achieve real peace.  The child holding the globe signifies that if we could inspire our children, then through them, peace in the entire world could be achieved, enabling them to understand what it means to celebrate life. Peace – a step closer. Peace – a generation away! Thank you, hope you like the concept I did for our cover!”

This note brought tears into my eyes:  “It will be my honor to contribute my photos to World Poetry. Consider every artwork that I make, whether in painting or photography, as something owned and part of our World Poetry Family. I will contribute a photo for the cover. It will be my pride and honor. Each time you see any of my photo that is worth using by World Poetry, consider it as something owned by the World Poetry. You may use them anytime you want.  Money is nothing, Peace is everything! Thank you so much for acknowledging my photography.”

This Morning, JP

The World Poetry Peace Exhibits:  Jaypee has also donated some other photos for the exhibit at the UBC Library and at Richmond City Hall. This Morning  is another image.

We are fortunate to have several other photos including a stunning photo from the Afghan documentary filmmaker Neamat Haidari and others.

I would like to thank all of you who have submitted peace poems, photos and gift poems. You are truly wonderful and part of the vision.

Ariadne Sawyer, MA, World Poetry Reading Series President