Online Poetry Project Lament for the Dead Mourns Daily

Today we are reading and re-reading Lament for the Dead, "an online community poetry project which will mark the death of every person killed by police this summer, and every police officer who loses life in the line of duty, with a poem." Norma Cole has written one for Jeffrey Clyde Wilkes of Gaston County, North Carolina, published August 8. Cole begins with an epigraph from Thich Nhat Hanh: “We are all children of the earth, and, at some time, she will take us back to herself again.” Read it here.

There is often--we'd say, generally--more than one poem published per day. Poets contributing range from well-known professors, publishers, and poets like Cole, Bill Berkson, Susan Schultz, Maxine Chernoff, and Elizabeth Robinson, to former North Carolina Poet Laureate Joseph Bathanti, to more editors, librarians, novelists, students, and poets from across the country.

From the project statement:

This project resists that lie by recognizing each other’s humanity,
even in the most difficult places.

Some people believe all people killed by police are criminals.
Some people believe the police are criminals.
Many people believe no criminal deserves lament.

But this project asks us to seek the humanity in all people,
even when we have committed terrible crimes.

At heart, it asks whether we hope someone might offer grace to us,
at our ugliest or most difficult moments.

When poets join, they do not know whether they will be lamenting the death of an officer
or someone who is killed by police.

Poets commit to writing on a specific date,
and compose each poem in less than 24 hours,
based on the events of the previous day.

Death notices are posted as they are reported in the press,
according to the time of each death,
and then replaced by a poem.

The community includes poets from Texas to Michigan, Southern California to New York City:
college students and grandmothers, children and spouses of police, award-winning poets, lawyers, psychiatrists, editors, professors, social workers, and the poet laureate of New York.

Argument, strategy, and reckoning are all crucial for change.

But to heal, we must also mourn.

Read on at Lament for the Dead.