[Iowa-dx] Guantánamo poems for "Live from Prairie Lights" - Iowa City

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University of Iowa News Release

Aug. 23, 2007

Falkoff introduces Guantánamo poems for 'Live from Prairie Lights'

Illinois lawyer Marc Falkoff, editor of "Poems from Guantánamo:
"The Detainees Speak", from the University of Iowa Press, will
introduce the book in a free event at 7 p.m. Tuesday, Sept. 4,
in the Prairie Lights bookstore at 15 S. Dubuque St. in downtown
Iowa City.  Or listen live on the Internet via the Writing University
Web site at http://writinguniversity.uiowa.edu.

The event will be recorded for broadcast on the "Live from Prairie
Lights" series, originating on UI radio station WSUI-AM 910.
Hour-long "Live from Prairie Lights" productions, hosted by Julie
Englander, air at 8 and 9 p.m. Saturdays, and 7 p.m. Sundays on
WSUI-AM 910 in Iowa City, WOI-AM 640 in Ames and KRNI-AM
1010 in Cedar Falls. A program is also broadcast at 5 p.m. Sundays
on KSUI-FM 91.7 in Iowa City.

"Poems from Guantánamo" anthologizes poetry written by "enemy
combatants" imprisoned at the U.S. Naval Base in Cuba, some of
whom scratched verse on paper cups before they were allowed to
possess writing instruments. The release of the book has provoked
international interest, including wire service news, feature stories
and opinions in print and on the Web.

Since 2002 at least 775 men have been held in the U.S. detention
center at Guantánamo Bay. According to Department of Defense
data, fewer than half of them are accused of committing any hostile
act against the United States or its allies. In hundreds of cases,
even the circumstances of their initial detainment are in question.

This collection gives voice to some of the men held at Guantánamo.
Available only because of the efforts of pro bono attorneys who
submitted each line to Pentagon scrutiny, "Poems from
Guantánamo" brings together 22 poems by 17 detainees, most still
in legal limbo at Guantánamo. The Defense Department prohibited
the publication of many other poems that were submitted.

Falkoff is an assistant professor at the Northern Illinois University
College of Law and attorney for 17 Guantánamo prisoners. Flagg
Miller, a linguistic and cultural anthropologist at the University of
Wisconsin, Madison, wrote the book's preface, and an afterword
was contributed by Ariel Dorfman, a Chilean-American poet,
novelist, playwright and human rights activist who holds the
Walter Hines Page Chair of Literature and Latin American Studies
at Duke University.

"Three decades ago, when I was living in exile and my country,
Chile, was being devastated by a dictatorship, I met a woman
who had been arrested by Pinochet's secret police and tortured
and raped in a cellar in Santiago," Dorfman wrote. "It was
poetry, she told me, which allowed her to survive.

"It is shameful and yet also wondrous that I immediately evoked
the woman as soon as I read the poems from the prisoners at
Guantánamo. Shameful because it is the United States,
supposedly a democracy, that is treating its detainees in the
same brutal manner that dictatorial Chile and countless other
desolate governments across the planet have treated their own
captives.

"Shameful because it is the United States, supposedly a beacon
of freedom, that has tortured these 'enemy combatants' and
denied them basic human rights. Shameful because it is the
United States, supposedly a model of justice, that has locked up
these men indefinitely, refused to charge them or put them on
trial, and abused their religion and convictions to pressure them
into 'confessing their terrorist links.'

"And wondrous, yes. The fact that men held in the most
appalling, desperate conditions, recur like that woman from Chile
did, to poetry as a response to the violence they are subjected
to. Can anything give us more hope for our species?"

The Writing University Web site provides a handy portal to the UI
writing programs, including the Iowa Writers' Workshop, the
International Writing Program, the Nonfiction Writing Program,
the Iowa Playwrights Workshop, the Translation Workshop, the
UI Press and the Iowa Summer Writing Festival. The site also
centralizes writing news, lists upcoming events and provides access
to a wealth of writing materials: texts, journals, lists of
Iowa-connected writers and publications, historic videos and
archived audio. Visitors to the site have the option of subscribing
to an RSS feed.

For UI arts information and calendar updates, visit
http://www.uiowa.edu/artsiowa. To receive UI arts news by
e-mail, go to http://list.uiowa.edu/archives/acr-news.html, click the
link "Join or leave the list (or change settings)" and follow the
instructions.

STORY SOURCE: University of Iowa Arts Center Relations,
300 Plaza Centre One, Suite 351, Iowa City, IA 52242-2500

MEDIA CONTACT: Winston Barclay, Arts Center Relations,
319-384-0073, cell: 310-430-1013, winston-barclay@uiowa.edu

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