Welcome, Oregon poets.

Oregon Poets Against the War is inspired by the website, Poets Against the War, established by Sam Hamill in response to an invitation to from Laura Bush to attend a poetry symposium. Laura Bush's subsequent cancellation of the symposium infused new life into the powerful voice of poets across the country. By the scheduled time of the symposium, more than 13,000 poems were submitted to the website.

Hundreds of these poems were sent from Oregon and they unmistakably declare that we are not going to be silenced, that the province of poetry is not a quiet corner in some academic turret. Poets don't descend from the clouds; they rise from the streets like the stones of Paris.

OPAW encourages the poets of Oregon to keep raising their voices by scheduling and coordinating readings across the state and by publishing the anthology, Raising Our Voices, to record this momentous event in the history of poetic voice. OPAW seeks to encourage the poets of Oregon to keep raising the volume ––we will be heard.