Daily Archives: August 13, 2007

In her interview at Library of Congress, Amy King points out many great truths about poetry today. She states that the internet is providing poets the opportunities of easier publicity of their work. Of course, she is careful to mention that the availability of the internet does not mean that we should weaken poetry. What’s happening now is we don’t have to be completely at the mercy of the big publishers. We can easily showcase our poetry online. In view of this, I have been looking at the diverse online media publishing poetry online, and I have noticed that there may be the temptation to sacrifice quality for quantity, publicising instead of publishing work. Is there a difference? I blog my poetry first, which means I create and publish my work instantaneously, but I am aware that this is some form of drafting; I always transfer the work to a local document for editing. Once the poem sounds polished, I send it to journals. Blogging has allowed me to produce more poetry in one year than I could have done in a long stretch of time. Look at the blogged pieces as the raw materials for high-quality poetry. So the message here is not to be deceived by the “Publish” key in blogs to think that the work is complete.The advantage of the internet and small presses is that we have opportunities to give ourselves the glory of publication/publicity before we are considered noticeable.

The organization Munhu is one of the efforts humanitarians everywhere are working to help children in Zimbabwe. While developed countries are busy placing sanctions on Zimbabwe because of Mugabe and his authoritarian government, the exemplary democracies are ignoring the plight of the innocent. Children are the most vulnerable when adults are involved in ego-duets/truets. Therefore, when I see the efforts of organizations like Munhu Inc., which is based in Coppell, Texas, I see some hope in the future of the most important segment of the Zimbabwean population – children. Below are the objectives of MUNHU:

Education
Help AIDS orphans by keeping them in school.

Health
Help monitor the health and emotional wellbeing of children
Help in identifying an adult to monitor and supervise the children.

Caregiver Support program
Provide assistance to care givers who are dealing with AIDS patients.
Provide gloves, antiseptics and other basic necessities to help with care giving.
Economic
Promote entrepreneurial programs among villagers, by providing micro grants for small cottage businesses.

Munhu operates on donations, and you can learn more about how to donate by visiting their website Munhu Inc: Helping One Child at a Time