Welcome to PoemAlley, Stamford, Connecticut's eclectic venue for poets, poetry reading and discussion! Open to anyone living in Fairfield County and the surrounding area, we meet Tuesday nights at 7:30 pm at Curley's Diner on 62 Park Place (behind Target) . Come contribute, get something to eat, or simply listen!
In the spirit of Smedley Butler and Ron Kovic, poet, author and Korean War veteran Walter Piestch will present his critique of political corruption, globally- suffocating imperialism and creeping authoritarianism that has come to characterize American domestic and international affairs over the last 40 years.
In addition to his poetry, Walter will read this evening from They Stole Our Country: We're Taking Her Back!, his 2002 memoir recounting his unprecedented attempted citizen's arrest of a sitting President (read his testimony against Richard Nixon here under search entry "434 F.2d 861") and his efforts to press lawsuits against Washington's undeclared wars in Vietnam, Nicaragua and Iraq as far as the U.S. Supreme Court.
As an "evolutionary revolutionary" who sees no expression of poetry that is not political, Walter will also discuss a way back from the Homeland Security state, TSA gropings, military commissions, drone surveillance/assassinations and the NDAA, through a three-pointed proposal to "expand democracy", ultimately transitioning society away from a culture of perpetual fear, repression and pathological profiteering, to one of love and care.
Irrepressibly dynamic peace and anti-nuclear activist, Greenwich resident Ayumi Temlock returns to PoemAlley after a two-month visit to India to talk about who she met, what she saw and the programs she participated in, conducted by such luminaries as ecology and food sovereignty activist, physicist Vandana Shiva (1993 Alternative Novel Peace Prize Winner), among others.
ISRO Manned Return Vehicle
temple ceiling
Over the last few years, Ayumi has been instrumental, independently and/or in conjunction with Greenwich/Stamford Peace Action and WESPAC Foundation, in protesting the proliferation of armed drone aircraft used against people of Yemen, Afghanistan and other nations, raising public awareness regarding the paucity of the official account of the 9/11 bombings and--a subject especially close to her--advocating for the abolition of nuclear weaponry.
For the latter cause, Ayumi personally arranged the financing and travel arrangements to bring two Hibakusha, Takashi Morita and Junko Watanabe, from Brazil to relate their first-person accounts as survivors of the 1945 atomic bombings of Nagasaki and Hiroshima to UConn students, New York residents and members of PoemAlley at Curley's in 2010. Listen to their historical contributions as translated by Ayumi at 3:35 (right after Dev Crasta and Rebeka Radna's ethereal duet) in the video below of the Green Fuse PA event, held at the Unitarian Universalist Society in Stamford (UUSIS) on April 24 of that year.
In the spirit of Smedley Butler and Ron Kovic, poet, author and Korean War veteran Walter Piestch will present his critique of political corruption, globally- suffocating imperialism and creeping authoritarianism that has come to characterize American domestic and international affairs over the last 40 years.
As an "evolutionary revolutionary" who sees no expression of poetry that is not political, Walter will also discuss a way back from the Homeland Security state, TSA gropings, military commissions, drone surveillance/assassinations and the NDAA, through a three-pointed proposal to "expand democracy", ultimately transitioning society away from a culture of perpetual fear, repression and pathological profiteering, to one of love and care. 
