In the NY Times, the speech has been qu0ted:

I would be remiss if I did not acknowledge the considerable controversy that your generous decision has generated. In part, this is because I am at the beginning, and not the end, of my labors on the world stage … Compared to some of the giants of history who have received this prize–Schweitzer and King, Marshall and Mandela–my accomplishments are slight.

In addition to writing his own memoir, Obama has never been shy about sharing his literary recommendations or summer reading list.

Watch Geir Lundestad explain why the Nobel Committee chose Barack Obama for 2009 Nobel Peace Prize.

This announcement follows the publication of Duffy’s first official poem as Laureate: ‘Politics’, which sees her join the government expenses row. You can view the poem here, or for more information on reactions to ‘Politics’ follow this link to the Guardian article.

The Festival brochure will be distributed across Merseyside and Lancashire from Monday 22nd June. More details will be available shortly, but for now visit the official website for more information.

Obama is, as you may know, a poetry fan. He stated on the campaign trail that:

no one should graduate from university without having read poetry.

Perfomers included:  slam poet Mayda Del Valle, from Obama’s hometown Chicago; hip-hop artist and composer Lin-Manuel Miranda; and the finalists from a youth poetry competition, Jamaica Heolimeleikalani Osorio and Joshua Brandon Bennett; actor James Earl Jones; jazz musician ELEW and Esperanza Spalding; novelist Michael Chabon, author of The Yiddish Policemen’s Union; and Ayelet Waldeman, author of Love and Other Impossible Pursuits.

This unique event combining poetry and jazz in very special surroundings can be viewed on the White House website.

‘Song on a May Morning’ is taken from Milton’s volume of 1645 Poems: a collection written in a variety of genres, and including some of his more famous work such as ‘Lycidas and Comus’. This particular poem celebrates both the youth , innocence and ‘mirth’ that is generally associated with the coming of Spring, and the  ‘blessing’ of new life and colour that the month of May provides us with. The image of dawn breaking in the first two lines of the poem emphasises the start of a new time in life: the coming of the ‘flowery May’.

Song on a May Morning

Now the bright morning-star, Day’s harbinger,
Comes dancing from the East, and leads with her
The flowery May, who from her green lap throws
The yellow cowslip and the pale primrose.
Hail, bounteous May, that dost inspire
Mirth, and youth, and warm desire!
Woods and groves are of thy dressing;
Hill and dale doth boast thy blessing.
Thus we salute thee with our early song,
And welcome thee, and wish thee long.

John Milton, 1645

Steve Chalke, Chair of STOP THE TRAFFIK and UN. GIFT Special Advisor on Community Action Against Human Traffiking, has composed STOP THE TRAFFIK: People Shouldn’t be Bought & Sold, a book which outlines the very real forms of exploitation that are alive in the world today. He argues that traffiking is not only a global issue but also a problem within local communities, and should be dealt with as such. Included are the personal accounts of those who have been tricked or forced into some type of illegal activity, and factual and background information on trafficking is provided to explain exactly what trafficking is, and what can be done to stop it. The book also includes a chapter written by Cherie Blair, human rights lawyer and campaigner for women’s rights.

STOP THE TRAFFIK: People Shouldn’t Be Bought & Sold is available now.

Here’s a picture from my 1977 High School Yearbook. Yes, my claim to fame is that I went to the same school as Barack Obama in Hawaii (middle row, third from left)! Punahou was founded in 1841 by Congregational missionaries from New England – the same religious tradition that Marilynne Robinson belongs to (and also, I assume, the character John Ames, in Gilead). Many of the essays in her book The Death of Adam challenge the lazy caricature of a oppressive, joyless Calvinism. In fact it was extraordinarily liberal, promoting an ethic of service and support for the weakest members of a community. I feel I can trace that tradition in the education I received, and see it reflected in Barack Obama’s values and oratorical style.

Hawaii was an interesting place to be in the seventies. It wasn’t a paradise of racial harmony as it was sometimes portrayed, but at least every group there was a minority. The Chinese were, per capita, the wealthiest ethnic group. The Japanese had a hegemony in the dominant Democratic party (you may remember Senator Dan Inouye, who chaired the Iran-Contra investigation. Well, you will if you’re old enough!). Kanaka Maoli, the Native Hawaiian people, who had been reduced to a small minority by the same kind of cultural near-genocide that was unleashed on Native Americans, were just beginning to fight back. Nainoa Thompson, another Punahou graduate, was successfully navigating a replica of a Polynesian voyaging canoe across the Pacific, without instruments, using the stars and traditional knowledge of winds and currents. Other activists risked (and lost) their lives challenging military occupation of the islands. (I was playing slack key guitar for a University of Hawaii production of Twelfth Night, rewritten in the local pidgin dialect. No, seriously! ‘Da bugga was Excellent’).

The fusion of Hawaiian and Asian values produces a very different style of relating, much less brash and assertive than the general picture of the loud American. Individualism is tempered by the importance of the extended family, ‘ohana, which is perceived as extending forwards and backwards in time, connecting us, via our ancestors, with guardian spirits and Ke Akua, God. It is actually quite close to the way many African people see family. And the land, a’ina is seen as a living person, a chief to be served, not exploited. A leader’s dignity was measured in his humility.

Most of all, the Hawaiian value of Lokahi, achieving harmony through working righteously in conflict, shines out in Obama’s victory speech:

As Lincoln said to a nation far more divided than ours: “We are not enemies, but friends… though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection.”
And to those Americans whose support I have yet to earn – I may not have won your vote tonight, but I hear your voices, I need your help, and I will be your president too.

And it was wonderful to hear this echoed by McCain, and even George W. Bush. Something wonderful has happened to America.

Mary Weston’s short novel The Junction is currently being serialised in The Reader magazine. Part one, published in issue 31 ‘Relative Time’, will be available to download from The Reader Organisation website in mid-November. Part-two will be available to read in The Reader 32 (available mid-November).

Barack Obama gave a speech today taking on the complicated history of racial relations in America. Considering the how difficult a topic this is to tackle, it was a brave move. Embedded within the speech was a quote from Faulkner, "The past isn’t dead and buried. In fact, it isn’t even past."

Andrew Sullivan at The Atlantic ran a letter from a reader explaining why "what Obama was signaling – that his speech – and his candidacy – are about confronting history from a Faulknerian standpoint was, to me, the bravest thing he did."

Here’s the link to Magee’s post.

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More information here.

As a volunteer organisation, Spirit Aid are able to ensure that 90% of all the funds they raise go straight to the projects they are involved in (unlike most of the bigger charities whose admin and advertising budgets swallow huge percentages of all donations).

The Book Of Hopes And Dreams, which is a celebration of the human spirit (even in times of great adversity) has captured the imagination and hearts of some of the greatest living poets of our times; all of whom have freely contributed work to this anthology. There are contributions from Margaret Atwood, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, John Heath-Stubbs, Carol Ann Duffy, Simon Armitage, Tony Harrison, Alasdair Gray, Edwin Morgan, Penelope Shuttle, Anne Stevenson, Jon Stallworthy, Alan Brownjohn, Ruth Fainlight, David Constantine, Moniza Alvi, Cyril Dabydeen, Elaine Feinstein, Vicki Feaver, Michael Horovitz, Tom Leonard, Robert Mezey, Lawrence Sail, Jay Ramsay, Charles Ades Fishman, Geoffrey Godbert and Ian Duhig, amongst others.

The book costs £9.99 and can be ordered in all high street bookstores in the UK. It can also be bought outside the UK via the publisher, Bluechrome or from UK Amazon. Not only is it brimming over with the work of award winning poets, its message is resoundingly positive and optimistic in outlook, which many will find refreshing, given the zeitgeist for poet-modern irony, ennui and despair.

More importantly, royalties from every copy sold will go towards providing mobile clinics, doctors, nurses and medicines for the people of the far flung, mountainous region of Baglan in North East Afghanistan, where the population hadn’t received any medical care whatsoever for 25 years, until Spirit Aid raised funds for their first mobile clinic.

Dee writes: ‘I hope you will consider buying this book, because it really will help to save lives. It will also help to improve the quality of peoples’ lives. And who knows, with its uplifting tone, it may even improve the quality of your life or inspire your own writing endeavours. Mike Matthews, one of the contributors wrote me recently and said: "The anthology is fantastic, and it has served as a major inspiration for me to continue to write every single day, for the poetry in it is genuinely high quality and uplifting. I have not been able to stop writing since it came out, and I carry it around with me everywhere, opening it before every writing session."’

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It’s always been my feeling that the most important literature is that which challenges those “home truths,” and in so doing forces us to step outside the ideology of a particular cultural moment to see what lies beyond those self-imposed boundaries of belief and literary form that the theorist Hans Robert Jauss has termed our “horizon of expectation.” It’s hard to imagine a writer who has done that more successfully than Rushdie, particularly in a novel like The Satanic Verses, which recasts the opening scene of Milton’s Paradise Lost – that beautiful line about Satan “hurled headlong flaming from the ethereal sky” – with his illegal immigrant angel, Gibreel, and “buttony, pursed” devil, Saladin Chamcha, an East-Englishman whose soul is a monstrous hybrid of Indian memory and English aspirations, as shattered by its conflicting desires as the airplane from which he tumbles to earth after a terrorist bombing.

Here’s the link.

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