What is the power of poetry to bring change to the world? Poetry has always been in circles struggling with protest and resistance. Is the most effective use of the art to change others or ourselves?

Katie Sarah Zale is a writer and editor, president of the Arizona State Poetry Society, and facilitator for the Compassionate Listening Project. She believes in the power of the arts to transform ourselves and the world.  She has published four collections of poetry. Her most recent, The Weight of a Leaf, an Arizona State Award finalist, has been nominated for the Eric Hoffer Book Award. The Art of Folding was inspired by her travels with the Compassionate Listening Project to Israel and Palestine. Her collection, Sometimes We Do Things, celebrates a re-envisioning and celebration of the rebuilding of Detroit. She co-edited the anthology Strange Fruit: Poems on the Death Penalty with hopes of persuading the Washington State Supreme Court to abolish the death penalty. The author of numerous literary, magazine, newspaper, and academic articles, including “Listening as the Foundation of Peace-building: Teaching Peace in the Humanities” (U.S. Institute of Peace, 2013). She is co-editor of Winter in America (Again, an anthology where poets responded to the 2024 Presidential election, and the upcoming sequel, Winter in America.

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About NHPA’s bi-weekly Zoom Peace & Justice Conversation Series: 2020’s upheavals brought us to a new moment of reckoning and possibility. How do we want to live in the world? What do we value? How can we make the changes we’ve been yearning for? NH Peace Action has been engaged in working for change for decades. We’d like to bring you into these conversations about issues and options for the future.  There is no charge to attend, but your contributions in any amount are greatly appreciated.