When the world and everything in it becomes toxic and chaotic, I often turn to works of poetry for solace and insight. And it’s during such times that poets often rise to the challenges of taking a stand against the ascent of totalitarianism and fascism. They emerge as a culture’s moral compass, as prophets and advocates for change, for reformation, for revolution, and it’s important that these voices have a space to be shared.
Last April, Winning Writers launched a project to provide such a space. The website issued a call for poetry that incorporated words and phrases the U.S. government has banned for a new anthology that was published earlier this week. You can download a PDF of the anthology, Live and Let DEI: Poems That Draw on the U.S. Government’s New ‘Forbidden Words’, free of charge.
Edited by poet and Winning Writers vice president Jendi Reiter, the anthology contains 34 poems and text-image hybrids selected from over 650 entries. “Some are comical, others are poignant, tragic, or righteously angry,” Reiter says. But they all “share a commitment to keep our language and our country from becoming corrupted.”
“Poets are the court jesters we need right now,” says Reiter in the introduction to the anthology.” We have the tools to display the stubborn diversity (uh-oh, can’t say that now) of language and life. The tech bros can’t compare their stock portfolios without the word ‘“’equity.’”’ If we can’t say ‘“’women,’”’ does that mean everyone with XX chromosomes is now a trans man? (Welcome to the party, boys!) Without a ‘sense of belonging,’ we wouldn’t have white supremacy or Christian nationalism. Words are ungovernable, and that’s what we have to be, too.”
For this anthology, Reiter sought “poems that used the banned words in a transformative way. A lot of these words are abstractions, which can make a poem feel generic and unmusical if one simply stacks the words together without surrounding imagery or poetic rhythm.”
But the poems Reiter chose for Live and Let DEI reflect a range of perspectives, from the whimsical and playful (witness Angela Sweet-Christian’s “Baby Got Sacked,” which “employs the catchy structure of Sir Mix-A-Lot’s rap hit to satirize the know-nothings’ destruction of academic research”) to “poignant, tragic, or righteously angry” works.
The overall purpose of this book might best be summarized by this excerpt from David Wynne-Jones’s poem “Words Matter”:
Poetry matters, it can go
into places others do not know
beyond the reach of those who
seek to control the narrative
by sackings, censorship, and cancel culture.From “Words Matter,” by Dave Wynne-Jones,
Published in Live and Let DEI
Andy writes! 
This looks great! Thanks for sharing.