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Create!

That's the purpose of this section. You are encouraged to read the poems

posted here and elsewhere on the Poetry X Hunger website, to look 


at 
the historic accounts of hunger, famine and starvation, or consider the

​prompts suggested and then... write some poetry about hunger.
 

Poem by Anne Harding Woodworth

12/15/2020

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FAMINE
​

    . . . the body is dyed
    by illness like a piece of cloth
    by an extraneous color.
            —W.G. Sebald

The dyer makes the linen
a deeper color of dug earth,
boils it in water with acacia
until the natural mole’s-back gray-tan
becomes peat-bog purple.

The well-fed lord is not pleased
with the linen’s new color
and wants it changed back.
The dyer replies that once a beginning unfolds,
recovery of what was is not possible.

And he feels helpless walking home that night
to his beyond-hungry child.
On a cot she lies fevered,
her hair fallen out, her mouth without saliva.

Transports come by every evening
to gather the dead, and they jostle
over the river to a far-from-town field,
where blackened by illness tubers also rest.

The dyer lies down next to his daughter,
and while she sleeps,
he tries to solve the undyeing of a piece of cloth.

from Anne Harding Woodworth,
Up From the Root Cellar, Cervena Barva Press, 2006


Click on the link below to listen to Anne read her poem:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/96j6z8srj1rrsg8/Woodworth%E2%80%94Famine.m4a?dl=0
Picture
Anne Harding Woodworth, author of
a sixth book of poetry, The Eyes Have It,
with a seventh, Trouble, coming in late 2020.

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  • Home
  • Hunger Poetry
    • Now more than ever! >
      • Now more than ever: Submitted poems
    • 2020 WFD Poetry Competition >
      • 2020 World Food Day - submitted poems
      • 2020 World Food Day Poetry Competition announcement
    • World Food Day Poetry Competition 2019 >
      • World Food Day 2019 - Submitted Poems
    • World Food Day Poetry Competition 2018 >
      • WFD 2018 - Submitted Poems
    • Maryland Poets
    • International Poets
  • About
    • About the Initiative
    • Initiative Founder
    • Advisory Board
  • News & Blog
    • Events
  • Young!
    • Poems by Young Poets
    • Videos
    • Materials for Teachers
  • Library
    • Extent of Hunger >
      • Global Hunger: Progress & Challenges
      • Hunger in the US
    • Historic Accounts of Hunger >
      • Africa
      • The Americas
      • Asia
      • Europe and Russia
    • Historical Poems
    • Interviews
  • Create
    • Prompts to help you get started
  • Contact us & Get involved!
    • Call to Action
    • Resources >
      • Global resources
      • US resources
      • Maryland resources