Seeds of Fire brings together the work of over fifty poets from the other USA - including Adrienne Rich, Fred Voss, Grace Paley, Amiri Baraka, Jayne Cortez and Martín Espada.
Lyrical, satirical, raging and prophetic, they bear witness against the crippling nationalism promoted by the ruling political parties and corporate media in the United States. They seek solidarity with the impoverished and war-torn working classes around the world against the forces of imperial slaughter, environmental catastrophe and social disintegration.
Some poems call us to the barricades, some to despair. Some detail the way capitalism can poison even the most intimate aspects of our lives, while others record the bloody consequences of The American Way, from Palestine and Iraq, Vietnam and Chile to the beggars on the streets of Washington.
These poets sow their seeds of fire in the hope that the real globalization project is the building of international unity among all those - including the ghosts of John Coltrane, Emmett Till, Tom McGrath, Rachel Corrie, Woody Guthrie, Emma Goldman, Tom Paine and the Blue Cat - who believe that a better world is still possible.
The pictures below were taken at US launch for Seeds of Fire, held at New York's Bowery Club, which raised three hundred dollars for the Middle East Children's Alliance.
 Anne Babson |
 Tim Seibles |
 Christopher Butters |
 Doug Anderson |
 Denise Abercrombie |
Frank Reeve |
 Michael Henson |
 Don Winter |
 Jim Scully |
 Jon Andersen |
"if you have been feeling as helpless and frustrated and angry with global and national politics as I have, check it out."
Rain Taxi
"keep this wonderful volume in the car... or buy an extra copy for the waiting room of your favourite doctor's office"
Pete Seeger
Jon Andersen lives in New England with his wife, the poet Denise Abercrombie, and their two sons. He has worked as a farmhand, a warehouse worker, a gardener and in a lumberyard. He is presently a high school teacher. He is a recipient of The People Before Profits Poetry Prize and Partisan Press's Working People's Poetry Award. Curbstone Press published his first full-length collection, Stomp and Sing, in 2005.
Seeds of Fire: Contemporary Poetry from the Other USA, edited by Jon Andersen
ISBN 978-0-9554028-2-1
Price: £9.95
Publication date: 29th February 2008
Order Seeds of Fire from Inpress.
