Civil Disobediences: Poetics and Politics in Action

With incisive energy, wit, and wisdom, these powerful essays explore the intersection between poetry and politics.

As art’s role in engaging society and coalescing dissent becomes more apparent and more urgent, Civil Disobediences offers a manual for understanding poetry’s history and enacting its ultimate power to dismantle and recreate political and cultural realities. Composed of essays, lectures, and teaching materials by leading Beat and contemporary poets and scholars, this anthology explores the craft of poetry as well as the history of poetic/political action in the U.S. and abroad, the development of ancient and modern poetic forms, the legacy of world-renowned poets, and the intersections between poetry and spirituality. It also provides concrete advice about bringing poetry into your local community and ensuring that “poetry is news that stays news.”

Anne Waldman is an internationally renowned poet, performer, and Distinguished Professor of Poetics at Naropa University’s Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics. She is the co-editor of Civil Disobediences: Poetics and Politics in Action and the author of over forty books, including In the Room of Never Grieve and Vow to Poetry: Essays, Interviews, & Manifestos.

Lisa Birman has been teaching writing for the past ten years in the United States, Australia and the Czech Republic. She is the author of For That Return Passage—a Valentine for the United States of America, and co-editor with Anne Waldman of the anthology Civil Disobediences: Poetics and Politics in Action, and has published several chapbooks of poetry, including O–A Conversation and deportation poems. Her work has appeared in Milk Poetry Magazine, Tarpaulin Sky, Trickhouse, Poetry Project Newsletter, thuggery & grace, 26, admit2, Bombay Gin, and not enough night. Lisa works as a content editor, copyeditor, and proofreader. She is also the Director of the Summer Writing Program at Naropa University’s Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics, where she teaches for the MFA in Creative Writing.