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News,  Saturday Poetry

Saturday Poetry – ‘Morning Song’ by Naomi Shihab Nye

Saturday Poetry – ‘Morning Song’ by Naomi Shihab Nye

This week’s Saturday Poetry matched with mobile photography/art is entitled. ‘Morning Song’. by Naomi Shihab Nye. She gives voice to her experience as an Arab-American through poems about heritage and peace that overflow with a humanitarian spirit.

I have matched mobile art by @wander_in_wonder_woman with this image entitled ‘Yellow illuminates the soul; welcome to the bright side of life. ✨💛✨’.

If you would like to be featured in our Saturday Poetry section, please ensure you include the hashtag #theappwhisperer on any images posted to Instagram. This will mean we will be able to consider it.

To view the others we have published in this section, go here.

via Poets.org

‘Morning Song’. by Naomi Shihab Nye

The tiny journalist
will tell us what she sees.

Document the moves, the dust,
soldiers blocking the road.

Yes, she knows how to take a picture
with her phone. Holds it high

like a balloon. Yes, she would
prefer to dance and play,

would prefer the world
to be pink. It is her job to say

what she sees, what is happening.
From her vantage point everything

is huge—but don’t look down on her.
She’s bigger than you are.

If you stomp her garden
each leaf expands its view.

Don’t hide what you do.
She sees you at 2 a.m. adjusting your

impenetrable vest.
What could she have

that you want? Her treasures,
the shiny buttons her grandmother loved.

Her cousin, her uncle.
There might have been a shirt . . .

The tiny journalist notices
action on far away roads

farther even than the next village.
She takes counsel from bugs so

puffs of dust find her first.
Could that be a friend?

They pretended not to see us.
They came at night with weapons.

What was our crime? That we liked
respect as they do? That we have pride?

She stares through a hole in the fence,
barricade of words and wire,

feels the rising fire
before anyone strikes a match.

She has a better idea.

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poetry
‘Yellow illuminates the soul; welcome to the bright side of life. ✨💛✨Yellow illuminates the soul; welcome to the bright side of life. ✨💛✨’ ©wander_in_wonder_woman

Joanne Carter, creator of the world’s most popular mobile photography and art website— TheAppWhisperer.com— TheAppWhisperer platform has been a pivotal cyberspace for mobile artists of all abilities to learn about, to explore, to celebrate and to share mobile artworks. Joanne’s compassion, inclusivity, and humility are hallmarks in all that she does, and is particularly evident in the platform she has built. In her words, “We all have the potential to remove ourselves from the centre of any circle and to expand a sphere of compassion outward; to include everyone interested in mobile art, ensuring every artist is within reach”, she has said. Promotion of mobile artists and the art form as a primary medium in today’s art world, has become her life’s focus. She has presented lectures bolstering mobile artists and their art from as far away as the Museum of Art in Seoul, South Korea to closer to her home in the UK at Focus on Imaging. Her experience as a jurist for mobile art competitions includes: Portugal, Canada, US, S Korea, UK and Italy. And her travels pioneering the breadth of mobile art includes key events in: Frankfurt, Naples, Amalfi Coast, Paris, Brazil, London. Pioneering the world’s first mobile art online gallery - TheAppWhispererPrintSales.com has extended her reach even further, shipping from London, UK to clients in the US, Europe and The Far East to a global group of collectors looking for exclusive art to hang in their homes and offices. The online gallery specialises in prints for discerning collectors of unique, previously unseen signed limited edition art. Her journey towards becoming The App Whisperer, includes (but is not limited to) working for a paparazzi photo agency for several years and as a deputy editor for a photo print magazine. Her own freelance photographic journalistic work is also widely acclaimed. She has been published extensively both within the UK and the US in national and international titles. These include The Times, The Sunday Times, The Guardian, Popular Photography & Imaging, dpreview, NikonPro, Which? and more recently with the BBC as a Contributor, Columnist at Vogue Italia and Contributing Editor at LensCulture. Her professional photography has also been widely exhibited throughout Europe, including Italy, Portugal and the UK. She is currently writing several books, all related to mobile art and is always open to requests for new commissions for either writing or photography projects or a combination of both. Please contact her at: [email protected]