Seeds of Dissent: Poem for Ai Weiwei

Ai Weiwei, Sunflower Seeds, 2010

© Ai Weiwei

Photocredit: Tate Photography

Seeds of Dissent 

Poem for Ai Weiwei 

Ai Weiwei,

your sunflower seeds

massed, ripened,

ruptured pods,

showering our words for yours,

your voice gone missing.

*

You behind

their firewall, silenced

bits and bytes,

don't forget

your father, his tongue too charged

with a poet's crime.

He, seeing,

learned how artists' hands

turning dirt,

splitting rock,

break scribbling odes to a child

wishing him at home.

*

You shared seeds,

turned your face to wind,
sunflowered
in China,
made of painted porcelain
new unquiet tongues.

*

Understand:
sunflowers wither.

Lu Qing waits,

jasmine branch

stripped bare. Set an example,

Ai said, and he did.

© 2011 Maureen E. Doallas

______________________________

". . . an individual has to set an example in society. Your own acts or behaviour tell the world who you are and at the same time what kind of society you think it should be." ~ Ai Weiwei

Lu Qing is Ai Weiwei's wife.

Ai Weiwei's father, Ai Qing (1910-1996) was a poet who was imprisoned for six years and, while exiled for 20, was forced to clean public toilets.

To learn more about Ai Weiwei's installation Sunflower Seeds at Tate Modern until May 2, go here. Take time to view this excellent video with Ai Weiwei, who demonstrates how the installation was made and what it means (you may also view the video here). The sunflower is deeply symbolic in China.

My earlier post about Ai Weiwei is here.

See Ben Davis, "Ai Weiwei Faces Strange New Accusations in China as Supporters Rally in Hong Kong: The Latest Developments", ArtInfo, April 11, 2011.

Ai Weiwei is one of three artists who created site-specific installations for an exhibition, "The Divine Comedy", at Harvard. His installation ("Untitled", 2011) is a memorial to the schoolchildren who died in the 2008 earthquake in Sichuan; it consists of 5,335 school backpacks, each identical, each representing a child's life lost (unnecessarily, because school buildings were so poorly constructed, the result of graft and corruption), and a continuously looping sound piece, "Remembrance", in which each child's name is said aloud. A related project, "My Time Is Your Surroundings", organized by metaLAB (at) Harvard, calls for Twitter responses to the artist's work or continued detention. Every response using the hastag #mtys is projected live next to Ai Weiwei's installation, which is on view until May 17, 2011. Go here for more information about participating in @aiww One-to-Many with Ai Weiwei. 

* * * * *

I offer this series, in the Shadorma form (six lines in 3-5-3-3-7-5 syllables, respectively), for  this week's One Shot Wednesday event at One Stop Poetry, which each week invites poets to share, read, and comment on each other's work. Be sure to visit the site late Tuesday afternoon and every Wednesday for links to the many contributors' poems.