International PEN, the world association of writers, has devoted itself to building “bridges of understanding” between cultures and protecting freedom of expression since its formation in 1921. In this Olympic year, its Sydney and Swiss German affiliates have come up with a brilliant way to use words in the campaign for free expression: The International PEN Poem Relay. They have chosen a poem by Shi Tao, the journalist imprisoned in China for 10 years for emailing a government document asking journalists not to report on the 15th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre, as a poetic torch, to travel the world along the path of the Olympic torch by going from PEN center to PEN center, being translated along the way. The poem is “June,” here in its English translation by Chip Rolley of the Sydney Pen Centre:

June

My whole life

Will never get past “June”
June, when my heart died
When my poetry died
When my lover
Died in romance’s pool of blood

June, the scorching sun burns open my skin
Revealing the true nature of my wound
June, the fish swims out of the blood-red sea
Toward another place to hibernate
June, the earth shifts, the rivers fall silent
Piled up letters unable to be delivered to the dead

      Shi Tao (trans. Chip Rolley)

from The Guardian Books Blog (UK):
“Protest poem takes on Olympic flame,” by Simon Ings
“A virtual torch of freedom and free expression, crossing continents on fibre-optic threads and microwaves: the irony cannot be lost on Shi Tao. Indeed, it was surely uppermost in the organisers' minds as they cooked up this elegant, cerebral protest. The Chinese knew to arrest Shi Tao because he was using a Yahoo! email account. He may as well have posted his account details direct to the government. Yahoo! did.”

from PEN American Center:
“Billy Collins Reads Shi Tao’s ‘June’ as Part of Free Expression Poem Relay”
“As the Olympic torch reached the U.S., PEN American Center today released a recording of former U.S. Poet Laureate and PEN American Center Vice President Billy Collins reading imprisoned Chinese writer Shi Tao’s poem ‘June’.... The recording serves as PEN American Center’s "leg" in the International PEN Poem Relay—an effort by PEN centers all over the world to publicize the lack of free expression in China by shadowing the progress of the Beijing Olympic Torch and broadcasting translations of ‘June’ in over 60 languages.” (You can listen to the Billy Collins recording at the bottom of this page.

from The Age (Melbourne, Australia):
“Poem follows Olympic torch in freedom call,” by Arnold Zable
“Writers worldwide have translated and recorded the poem ‘June’ by imprisoned journalist and poet Shi Tao into, at last count, more than 90 languages. The poem is a moving meditation on the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests and massacre, written on June 9, 2004, to coincide with the event’s 15th anniversary.... It has moved via website, from PEN centre to centre, along a route similar to the Olympic torch itinerary, adding new translations as it goes. So far the poem has been to 70 locations throughout Europe, the Americas, Africa and the Middle East, and it will continue its journey up to the opening of the Olympics in August. The Australian leg will include translations into Aboriginal and other languages that reflect our extraordinary linguistic diversity.”