Please join us for a presentation by and conversation with Shanee Stepakoff, author of the 2021 book Testimony: Found Poems from the Special Court for Sierra Leone. Shanee will share about the experiences that led her to an innovative method of making poems and will read selected portions of the book, after which we will devote some time for Q & A and discussion.<\/p>\n
From the publisher\u2019s website: \u201cSierra Leone\u2019s devastating civil war barely caught the attention of Western media, but it raged on for over a decade, bringing misery to millions of people in West Africa from 1991 to 2002. The atrocities committed in this war and the accounts of its survivors were duly recorded by international organizations, but they run the risk of being consigned to dusty historical archives. Derived from public testimonies at a UN-backed war crimes tribunal in Freetown, this remarkable poetry collection aims to breathe new life into the records of Sierra Leone\u2019s civil war, delicately extracting heartbreaking human stories from the morass of legal jargon. By rendering selected trial transcripts in poetic form, Shanee Stepakoff finds a novel way to communicate not only the suffering of Sierra Leone\u2019s people, but also their courage, dignity, and resilience. Her use of innovative literary techniques helps to ensure that the voices of survivors are not forgotten but rather heard across the world. This volume also includes an introduction that explores how the genre of \u2018found poetry\u2019 can serve as a uniquely powerful means through which writers may bear witness to atrocity. This book\u2019s unforgettable excavation and shaping of survivor testimonies opens new possibilities for speaking about the unspeakable.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Please join us for a presentation by and conversation with Shanee Stepakoff, author of the 2021 book Testimony: Found Poems from the Special Court for Sierra Leone. Shanee will share about the experiences that led her to an innovative method of making poems and will read selected portions of the book, after which we will […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":104828,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","tags":[],"mec_category":[542],"mec_speaker":[2793],"class_list":["post-104827","mec-events","type-mec-events","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","mec_category-webinar"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n