I am currently listening to Bright Eyes and I heard a lyric that really made me think about humans… I will jump into it…

“I had a friend that changed his name but couldn’t change himself.”

This got me thinking and I can see a few different meanings to this lyric. As people, we are ever changing and we grow every day. I was first under the impression that this was somebody who feels uncomfortable with who they are and they tried to change to be who they want to be. Really, they shouldn’t have tried to change. There can be no true change until you are content with who you are. As people, we need to understand who we are before we can love others and grow into a better person ourself.

What I take from this is how powerful a sentence can be. This one sentence had me thinking for over 10 minutes. Good poetry will do the same thing to me.

The more you say with few words can be amazing. Please choose your words carefully!!!

Hey everyone, I will be doing a disappearing act for the next month… I have a ton of work at the office and a finals starting in a week or so…

See you all in mid May!

Take care,
Bob

Hope: Living and Loving with HIV in Jamaica

(Written By Bob Mortland and taken from and posted in the blog of Poetrywithmeaning.com; celebrate National Poetry Month!!!)

A poet goes back to Jamaica and discusses the effect aids has on communities. I would like to share this story with our community here on Poetry with meaning. I believe these people problems are very powerful and I acknowledge that we have problems as well. I would like to see us rise up and help combat some of these human problems that we have. This can be done through education and the help of some modern science. I would love to see more poetry that can inspire people to take action and come together as a community to combat disease. With the latest statistics showing that 1 in 4 teen girls have a std, I believe that our community can help push these statistics down

Thank you,
Bob Mortland

Hope: Living and Loving with HIV in Jamaica

How it had me all I wanted was to do

was crawl in a ball and dead like that

but see me here now, see me here now,

man must live, iyah, man must live. -Kwame Dawes, Live Up

Poet and writer Kwame Dawes travels to Jamaica to explore the experience of people living with HIV/AIDS and to examine the ways in which the disease has shaped their lives. The journey brings him in touch with people who tell their stories, share their lives and teach him about resilience, hope and possibility in the face of despair. Some are living with the disease; others have committed their lives to HIV/AIDS care.

Hope: Living and Loving with HIV in Jamaica is a multi-media reporting project: an extended essay by Kwame Dawes for The Virginia Quarterly Review (Spring 2008), two short documentaries for the public-television program Foreign Exchange, a collection of poetry inspired by his reporting, a performance of the poems set to music by composer Kevin Simmonds, and LiveHopeLove.com, an interactive web presentation that synthesizes audio and text versions of the poems, the Foreign Exchange videos, additional video interviews, the music, and photography by Joshua Cogan.

Acknowledgements:

This reporting project was made possible through the support of the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting in association with The Virginia Quarterly Review, Azimuth Media and bluecadet interactive. The Center funded Kwame Dawes’ travel costs and also commissioned the video documentary, photography and interactive web narrative that complement the reporting project.

Hope: Living and Loving with HIV in Jamaica is the second of two Caribbean reporting initiatives undertaken by the Pulitzer Center with support from the MAC AIDS Fund.

For more information please visit:
livehopelove.com AND
Poetrywithmeaning.com