WINTER 06: Listen to babel
Added: November 2006 to Babel (archive)
Dear Readers,
November promises to be a busy and exciting month for ICORN. A new City of Refuge has just chosen a writer for placement, and yet another city is making their choice as I type this.
Perhaps no one's story reminds us of the network's importance more than that of Winter's Featured Writer Faraj Baryakdar , who was once called "one of the world's forgotten prisoners".
Every issue of babel presents an Empty Chair- our effort to help remember prisoners of conscience. This month is no exception. Yang Maodong is just one of many recently arrested writers and editors.
In this issue you can listen in on a conversation between two poets: an Iranian exile and a Canadian expatriate, and you can also listen to Rita Dahl read one of her prose poems. This is the first of what we hope will be many sound files.
ICORN's Guest Writers have taken part in several literary festivals and book fairs this autumn. Important issues regarding censorship and literary dissemination have been brought up in panel debates and discussed in plenum, and prominent writers like Orhan Pamuk and Moris Farhi have spoken on behalf of their silenced colleagues around the world.
The Winter issue of babel presents the speech Moris Farhi made at the Frankfort Book Fair.
We would like to thank Moris Farhi again here for his engagement and for his words:
when a writer is killed
language
loses one of its words
when all writers are killed
there will be
no words left
no language
only
dictators
racists
nationalists
whores of war
false prophets
only
the worship of death
© 2006 Moris Farhi
We hope the Winter Issue of babel will touch and inspire you.
--
Ren Powell, Editor babel
Helge Lunde, ICORN Project Manager