A talk by Michael True at Greenfield Community College,11/5/2010

Michael True, an activist peace educator, has documented the nonviolent tradition in American literature.  He introduced his presentation on poetry and peacemaking in our Roots of Peace series, by saying the “most important thing we can do as peacemakers is teach peacemaking skills.”  Under themes of “Battlefield,” “Homefront,” Resistance,” and Peacemaking,” he read and discussed more than a dozen poems including that of World War I soldier, Wilfred Owen on the futility of war to those of Denise Levertov, among them “Making Peace” and “Political Action in Which Each Person Acts from the Heart.”

Michael True is the author and editor of eleven books, essays, reviews, and poems in scholarly and general periodicals, including Commonweal, America, New Republic, The Progressive, Boston Globe, Friends Journal, Harvard Divinity Bulletin. A native of Oklahoma, he is emeritus professor, Assumption College, and former president, International Peace Research Association Foundation.

A National Endowment for the Humanities Fellow, and twice a Fulbright Scholar in India, Michael True has taught at twenty colleges and universities in this country and abroad, including Duke University, Columbia University, University of Hawaii, Nanjing University (China), Utkal University, Bubaheshwar, and University of Rajasthan, Jaipur (India).

Thanks to the GCC video archive this talk is available for viewing here.