Word Travels: Refugee and Immigrant Voice and Visibility.
In autumn of 2018, Merna traveled to Europe to realize a longstanding goal of working with refugees in Berlin and Athens, two of Europe’s major hubs for immigration. After producing and editing seven published poetry anthologies from the Stories of Arrival: Refugee & Immigrant Youth Voices Poetry project, Merna felt the strong sense that wider dissemination of refugee and immigrant voices was needed, especially from adult and inter-generational groups. Her vision to extend the project took shape just at the time when border issues and negative rhetoric about immigrants and refugees were heightened and increasingly punitive and cruel policies were put in place. These policy changes motivated Merna to travel and seek out organizations abroad that modeled and implemented more humane approaches to the refugee crises. In the fall of 2018, she volunteered as a poet and storyteller with refugee women and children in Berlin and in Athens. (Read more here: https://teachersandwritersmagazine.org/poems-without-borders-writing-to- bear-witness-5977.htm) This experience influenced her desire to expand and deepen the reach of her work which is reflected in the new name she has adopted for her continued work with immigrants and refugees—Word Travels. Plans for the future Word Travels projects will continue to celebrate the courage and vulnerability it takes to write about the losses interwoven with exile and the strength it takes to remain hopeful. A belief in the power of writing that tells these stories of is fundamental to these projects. The poems, stories and art created through this endeavor will remind all of us of our capacities to overcome immense suffering with the determination to dream a better life. Widening the community spaces to receive the poems, stories, visual poems and murals created in Word Travels projects will help dispel stereotypes and unfounded fears with the voices we all need to hear. The goal for Word Travels projects of expanded community outreach for refugee and immigrant groups of all ages is in full recognition of the power of stories, poetry and art to build bridges between different people and cultures rather than walls. In light of the current and harmful divisiveness in the USA and abroad this work could not be more urgent. Merna is grateful to have received a 2020-2022 King County 4 Culture grant in support of this continued work.
The goal for Word Travels projects of expanded community outreach for refugee and immigrant groups of all ages is in full recognition of the power of stories, poetry and art to build bridges between different people and cultures rather than walls.
Merna joins a diverse community poetry reading in Athens.
