This little poem originally dealt with the issue of refugee children being held in Australian detention centres at the behest of the Neo-Con Howard government. It's the kind of poem you wish you wish you didn't need to write - especially about a wealthy supposedly 'enlightened' nation like Australia. Sadly the current election campaign also shows all the signs of turning the phenomenon of asylum seekers entering Australia via Indonesian waters into political a political football. Unacknowledged racism among a significant part of the Australian population is the more fundamantal issue behind hard-line policies on refugees/asylum seekers.
Go to: The Refugee Fund file, copyright Ian Irvine 2002-2010 all rights reserved. This poem published in the Fire (special international double edition) Oxford UK, 2008. The edition featured contemporary activist and modernist poets from over sixty nations.
A detailed study of the origins of the New Alienation. The author labels it normative or postmodern ennui and traces its rise to cultural power over the last two centuries.
For the reasons I describe in this book, the world-wide suffering, death and extinction of humanity is very likely to occur, unless nonviolent and democratically determined radical and revolutionary personal and societal actions and changes are taken
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