true power

Gaspereau Press: You have long been an activist for peace and disarmament. What's the relationship between poetry and activism? Would you be a poet if you were not an activist, an activist if you were not a poet?

Sean Howard: I fear this may sound facetious, but would I breathe in, if I didn't breathe out? I experience poetry (as writer and reader) as an activation, at once, of language and self: a vivid liberation of the customarily dormant expressive energies of each! And I conceive of peace not primarily as an aspiration but rather the activation of its own transformative potential. As some pacifists like to say, while the bad news is "there is no way to peace," the good news is "peace is the way"! A peaceful society, I think, would be not just one secure from attack (from within or without) but one providing - and in turn sustained by - securely self-expressive, self-organized ways of being human: and this seem intimately related to the self-creative self-organization of language at work (and play) in poetry. The problem is that 'peace' has come to mean, in our world culture of violence, something admirable but weak that needs protection; just as - not coincidentally! - poetry is often written off as pretty, but pretty inconsequential, language. In reality, both are about reality, and thus true power: about real-izing the power of the real world again.

 - Sean Howard, from Gaspereau Press' wonderful 2021 catalogue, Another Plague Year Reader.