Poems in the Occupy Movement

A couple of weeks ago we took note of the many poets involved in the Occupy movement in cities across the country—and they are getting involved not only as protest marchers and campers, but as poets, contributing their poems to the cause. We’ve just received word of a brand-new online poetry journal, OccuPoetry, put together by Phillip Barron and Katy Ryan, who describe their publication this way:

“OccuPoetry collects and publishes poetry about economic justice/injustice, greed, protest, activism, and opportunity. OccuPoetry is an independent project inspired by the Occupy Movement. It is not a project of any one city’s Occupy encampment. This is the space we choose to occupy. This is what we can give.”

Poets at the original Occupy Wall Street in New York City have been gathering in a “poetry assembly” every Friday night, and the folks at OWS’s People’s Library have been collecting poems to make a handmade anthology. After the library’s books were seized and destroyed by the NYPD, Stephen Boyer and Filip Marinovich began to post the Occupy Wall Street Poetry Anthology online in PDF format.

And there are more gatherings of “Occupy Poems” sprouting on the Web:

• The Occupy Poetry Project posts “Poetry from the people”
• At The New Verse News, there are a number of recent poems inspired by the Occupy movement—“Occupy Wall Street” by Shirani Rajapakse, “We Are the Joyful Noise–#OccupySF” by Buff Whitman-Bradley, “Occupy Poetry” by Howie Good, “November 15, 2011” by Holly Anderson, and “Witness” by Khary Jackson

Have you come across more “Occupy Poems,” new or classic? Tell us about them, in “Comments” below!