WPM - North of Ireland

17/06/2026

good morning folks,

i've been so excited to share this post with you for a good while now, so here it is.

we're delighted to invite you to an evening of protest poetry in the sunflower bar on wednesday 8th of july, with doors at 6.30pm

this is part of the world poetry movement's july 2026 call to poetic action in response to the absolute madness that's on fire around the world, under whose banner a dozen poets from the north have been writing new poems these last couple of months toward the project title 'putting out the flames of war'.

we would love you to come down and hear our work, poems that have been carved from urgency to speak against the hell that we are seeing live streamed in 4k, every day.

and too, if you have a protest poem you wish to air, given the innumerable conflicts raging across the globe, which i'm pained to admit, poems which might include our own disgraceful pogrom week in which minority communities suffered deeply, you're more than welcome to get up and share.

this is the running order for the night, with the floor open from half nine for an hour, space enough, i hope, for your poems too.

poets running order 'putting out the flames of war'
sunflower, wednesday 8th july 2026, 6.30pm

intro (7.00pm)

john mackel (7.20pm)
mark evison (7.30pm)
rosie burrows (7.40pm
mark reid (7.50pm)
danielle truesdale (8.00pm)
peter kelly (8.10pm)
remco van straten (8.20pm)
david atkinson (8.30pm)
rosemary tumilty (8.40pm)
michael d sidwell (8.50pm)
enda boyle (9.00pm)
beckie stew (9.10pm)
marty mckenna (9.20pm)

floor readers (9.30pm)

close (10.30pm)

06/06/2026

Putting Out the Flames of War - a protest poem


Chad Norman from Nova Scotia in 1992 won the Gwendolyn MacEwen Memorial Award For Poetry. His new book, A Life Between The Brackets, is out Spring 2026 with Shadow Script Publications (Ireland). His poem, The Shoulds, in the Lunar Vagabond Collection, went to the moon Feb. 26, 2025.


WOMAN SITTING IN A CHAIR WEARING A WHITE POPPY
for the Syrian poet, Nour Nasra

By the border of my unknowing
I stood ready, always ready,
to admit to it, unknowing,
the border where I stood by
watching how she sat in a chair,
watching how her skin, hair, hands,
and posture made my eyes
become a painter,
briefly a Picasso,
my eyes being him,
being a way to watch how
a woman is sitting so far away from
that chair she chooses where
her family endures the wars
brought about by so many men,
men hardly leaders,
men from other lands where
women sit and face what she does
sitting in a chair anywhere,
anytime, as men fail as leaders,
fail as men,
who won't even pull out a chair
and offer a brief opportunity
for her and all women
to be seated while so many
cross so many borders
not knowing their choices,
choices about the colour of their skin
sadly still causing alarm
instead of being how to step
across those borders, and
take up a chair with her,
with all women left too often
sitting in some chair somewhere,
waiting for what they wait for
as if the future is so far along
something new, someone new,
is about to enter this room
what we call our home,
a choice we call our country,
a planet we can repair, the possibility
more than likely a woman
sitting somewhere many years back
said proudly and loudly is to be named, "Peace!"

06/06/2026

Putting Out the Flames of War - a protest poem


Mary E. Ringland is a Northern Irish poet and therapeutic counsellor who works out of Larne, County Antrim. Her poems have appeared in New Isles Press, The Morecambe Poetry Festival Anthology, Live Encounters, The Bangor Literary Journal, The Storms Journal and The Community Arts Partnership Anthology ‘Compass’. Mary is the media manager for the online platform Scribbler’s Salon. She completed her MA in Creative Writing at the Open University in October 2024.


Unholy Land

I opened the book with the broken spine, to leaf through story
lines of almonds scented and bitter as olive pith, tearing
through paper-thin velum towards an ending that never ends.
Delving into the rubble of squandered words, feeling strangled
by the syntax of their life sentence, searching for a language
of liberation. Under the cover of dust I find a mother
tracing the face of her freshly spoiled child, hollow-cheeked
and rainbow-stained with fright and cordite, dead to the world,
dreaming of a life to live for. I wipe a tear from the tragedy,
flip it over to ponder the blurb, pellucid, penned in blood
and bone. A plea to lower the flags that favour any nation.
A petition to withdraw your dumb bombs, your bunker bombs,
your white phosphorous fallacies of right and wrong. Peace
cannot be found east of Jerusalem or west of the West Bank.
It lives in the spirits that pass over this unholy land.

20/04/2026

the first of many protest poems we'll be sharing with you over the next few weeks. these are poems written as part of our 'putting out the flames of war' project.

1 like, 1 comment. "putting out the flames of war xiv - borderlands- april 2026"

07/04/2026

good morning!

so, i’ve recently stepped into a role coordinating a poetry initiative here in the north of ireland, connected to an international network of poets working around themes of peace, humanity, and public voice.

i’m putting together a small, thoughtful reading — something honest and open.

a few brilliant poets are already on board, and I’d love to invite others who feel connected to this kind of expression. no pressure on theme or stance — just real work, in a shared room.

i would also hope to gather a few poems to put forward for consideration in the wpm publication, 'poetry planetariat'

if that sounds like something you’d like to be part of, feel free to comment here or dm me or email me at [email protected]

as you were x

05/04/2026

PUTTING OUT THE FLAMES OF WAR

The endless war and blackmail promoted by US imperialism in Iran, Africa, Venezuela and Cuba, and by Zionism in Gaza and Lebanon, continues with great danger to life, like the accumulated conflicts of human history that we have not been able or able to solve.

Generations of men and women, young people, boys and girls, we inhabit a rich planet where millions of people suffer from material and cultural needs, a world polluted by capitalism whose water sources are running out, a beautiful place in the cosmos undermined by selfishness and by the contempt of the powerful for life, adrift and hopeless,.

The human spirit is wounded and deteriorates in a process of confusion and inertia that leads to non-existence. The world is falling apart in our hands. The species must act today to prevent it.

The World Poetry Movement calls the peoples of the earth and every person to speak out in a conscious, permanent and creative way on the streets.

We call for a global cultural revolution, for a historical action of the Human Spirit to extinguish the flames of war in the countries where it is fought, for generous dialogue that builds planetary peace, for sincere respect for differences, for perpetual and brotherly unconditional solidarity in human society.

The World Poetry Movement calls on peoples and nations, religions, the world working class, indigenous peoples and peasants, students and teachers, anti-nuclear fighters and peacebuilders, thinkers, academics, environmental and human rights defenders, poets and artists of the Earth to create, to intervene in public spaces and auditoriums, to publish on social networks poems, works of art and reflections on irreversible and immediate global peace.

The World Poetry Movement organizes a global poetry reading and calls on all its national coordinators to prepare face-to-face and virtual poetry actions around the world.

We appeal to the courage and power of the living in order to stop the impulse to kill and to die, we call on the soldiers to stop shooting and to press for the emergence of a powerful will for peace, social justice and sovereignty, today, now, here and everywhere.

WORLD POETRY MOVEMENT
Coordinating Committee
April 5, 2026