2007.04.09: April 9, 2007: Headlines: COS - Niger: Writing - Niger: Poetry: Poems: Praise for Niger RPCV Susan Rich's "Cures Include Travel"
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2007.04.09: April 9, 2007: Headlines: COS - Niger: Writing - Niger: Poetry: Seattle Times: Niger RPCV Susan Rich writes "Cures Include Travel" :
2007.04.09: April 9, 2007: Headlines: COS - Niger: Writing - Niger: Poetry: Poems: Praise for Niger RPCV Susan Rich's "Cures Include Travel"
Praise for Niger RPCV Susan Rich's "Cures Include Travel"
"Susan Rich writes gorgeous lyrical poetry which so courageously tells us the truth about the world, tells us the world is much larger than we Americans usually like to admit. Her beautiful ear, her fierce attention to detail, her deeply human empathy inspire me and make me glad. I am glad, no—thrilled—that there exists such a unique and memorable voice writing today about the joys and grievances of our planet, writing with such charge in ideas and language. In this age of irony as an end in itself and of art for art's sake, it is a rare luck to encounter a poet such as Susan Rich—for whom living in this world and writing about it is one and the same flash of poetry's transforming revelation.""
Praise for Niger RPCV Susan Rich's "Cures Include Travel"
Cures Include Travel
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Poetry Daily featured poet Susan Rich:
Susan Rich is the winner of the PEN USA Literary Award for Poetry as well as the Peace Corps Writers Poetry Award for The Cartographer's Tongue: Poems if the World. Her poems have appeared in journals such as Alaska Quarterly Review, Bellingham Review, North American Review, Poetry International, and Witness. She has worked as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Niger, West Africa, staff person for Amnesty International, an electoral supervisor in Bosnia, and a human rights trainer in Gaza. She taught at the University of Cape Town on a Fulbright Fellowship and now teaches at Highline Community College in the Seattle area and in the Antioch University MFA Program in Los Angeles, California. Recent awards include an Artist Trust Fellowship, the Sojourner Poetry Prize, and a Pushcart Prize nomination. A community advisor for Cottages at Hedgebrook, an editor at Floating Bridge Press, and a founding member of the Somali Rights Network, she makes her home in Seattle, Washington. For more information, visit her web site. (Author photo by Tom Collicott.)
Poetry Daily featured book About Cures Include Travel:
As the title, Cures Include Travel, suggests, these are ambitious poems that seek to grab hold of the larger world: a homeless youth in South Africa, a seamstress in Gaza, a Somali woman fleeing civil war. As an election supervisor in Bosnia, a Fulbright Fellow in South America, and a human rights trainer in Gaza, Susan Rich has traveled further from home visiting more war torn nations than perhaps any other American poet writing today. In this, her second volume of poems, we witness the aftermath of civil war in Bosnia, the all but extinct Jewish community of Dublin, and meet a man living for over a decade in a Paris airport.
Through her travels and accompanying meditations on finding home, she shares with her reader alternating sides of vulnerability and quiet strength. The fifty-four poems in this volume move through various external geographies to an inevitable confrontation with the self. In "What She Leaves Unspoken" the poem that opens Crossing Borders, the final section of the book, Rich writes "when she is blue, she is not you / but an absent text, an unreliable X" offering up another reason as to why travel may hold such allure.
Praise for Cures Include Travel:
"These begonias have come a long way," writes Susan Rich in a marvelous poem called 'Everyone in Bosnia Loves Begonias', and so has she! I admired her talent years ago, and this book makes it clear that she has grown into a mature and accomplished poet."
—Linda Pastan
"From the boldly erotic to the elegiac—Susan Rich gives us a collection of poems sensual yet exact in their language, generous in the range and power of their emotion."
—J.M. Coetzee
"Susan Rich writes gorgeous lyrical poetry which so courageously tells us the truth about the world, tells us the world is much larger than we Americans usually like to admit. Her beautiful ear, her fierce attention to detail, her deeply human empathy inspire me and make me glad. I am glad, no—thrilled—that there exists such a unique and memorable voice writing today about the joys and grievances of our planet, writing with such charge in ideas and language. In this age of irony as an end in itself and of art for art's sake, it is a rare luck to encounter a poet such as Susan Rich—for whom living in this world and writing about it is one and the same flash of poetry's transforming revelation."
—Ilya Kaminsky
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Headlines: April, 2007; Peace Corps Niger; Directory of Niger RPCVs; Messages and Announcements for Niger RPCVs; Writing - Niger; Poetry; The Peace Corps Library; Peace Corps History; Bulletin Board; Recent Peace Corps News
When this story was posted in May 2007, this was on the front page of PCOL:
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| Suspect confesses in murder of PCV Search parties in the Philippines discovered the body of Peace Corps Volunteer Julia Campbell near Barangay Batad, Banaue town on April 17. Director Tschetter expressed his sorrow at learning the news. “Julia was a proud member of the Peace Corps family, and she contributed greatly to the lives of Filipino citizens in Donsol, Sorsogon, where she served,” he said. Latest: Suspect Juan Duntugan admits to killing Campbell. Leave your thoughts and condolences . |
| Warren Wiggins: Architect of the Peace Corps Warren Wiggins, who died at 84 on April 13, became one of the architects of the Peace Corps in 1961 when his paper, "A Towering Task," landed in the lap of Sargent Shriver, just as Shriver was trying to figure out how to turn the Peace Corps into a working federal department. Shriver was electrified by the treatise, which urged the agency to act boldly. Read Mr. Wiggins' obituary and biography, take an opportunity to read the original document that shaped the Peace Corps' mission, and read John Coyne's special issue commemorating "A Towering Task." |
| Chris Dodd's Vision for the Peace Corps Senator Chris Dodd (RPCV Dominican Republic) spoke at the ceremony for this year's Shriver Award and elaborated on issues he raised at Ron Tschetter's hearings. Dodd plans to introduce legislation that may include: setting aside a portion of Peace Corps' budget as seed money for demonstration projects and third goal activities (after adjusting the annual budget upward to accommodate the added expense), more volunteer input into Peace Corps operations, removing medical, healthcare and tax impediments that discourage older volunteers, providing more transparency in the medical screening and appeals process, a more comprehensive health safety net for recently-returned volunteers, and authorizing volunteers to accept, under certain circumstances, private donations to support their development projects. He plans to circulate draft legislation for review to members of the Peace Corps community and welcomes RPCV comments. |
| He served with honor One year ago, Staff Sgt. Robert J. Paul (RPCV Kenya) carried on an ongoing dialog on this website on the military and the peace corps and his role as a member of a Civil Affairs Team in Iraq and Afghanistan. We have just received a report that Sargeant Paul has been killed by a car bomb in Kabul. Words cannot express our feeling of loss for this tremendous injury to the entire RPCV community. Most of us didn't know him personally but we knew him from his words. Our thoughts go out to his family and friends. He was one of ours and he served with honor. |
| Peace Corps' Screening and Medical Clearance The purpose of Peace Corps' screening and medical clearance process is to ensure safe accommodation for applicants and minimize undue risk exposure for volunteers to allow PCVS to complete their service without compromising their entry health status. To further these goals, PCOL has obtained a copy of the Peace Corps Screening Guidelines Manual through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and has posted it in the "Peace Corps Library." Applicants and Medical Professionals (especially those who have already served as volunteers) are urged to review the guidelines and leave their comments and suggestions. Then read the story of one RPCV's journey through medical screening and his suggestions for changes to the process. |
| The Peace Corps is "fashionable" again The LA Times says that "the Peace Corps is booming again and "It's hard to know exactly what's behind the resurgence." PCOL Comment: Since the founding of the Peace Corps 45 years ago, Americans have answered Kennedy's call: "Ask not what your country can do for you--ask what you can do for your country. My fellow citizens of the world: ask not what America will do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of man." Over 182,000 have served. Another 200,000 have applied and been unable to serve because of lack of Congressional funding. The Peace Corps has never gone out of fashion. It's Congress that hasn't been keeping pace. |
| PCOL readership increases 100% Monthly readership on "Peace Corps Online" has increased in the past twelve months to 350,000 visitors - over eleven thousand every day - a 100% increase since this time last year. Thanks again, RPCVs and Friends of the Peace Corps, for making PCOL your source of information for the Peace Corps community. And thanks for supporting the Peace Corps Library and History of the Peace Corps. Stay tuned, the best is yet to come. |
| History of the Peace Corps PCOL is proud to announce that Phase One of the "History of the Peace Corps" is now available online. This installment includes over 5,000 pages of primary source documents from the archives of the Peace Corps including every issue of "Peace Corps News," "Peace Corps Times," "Peace Corps Volunteer," "Action Update," and every annual report of the Peace Corps to Congress since 1961. "Ask Not" is an ongoing project. Read how you can help. |
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Story Source: Poems
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