The many forms and faces of activism

A Dad's poem for a Better Way

I get sent emails about all kinds of community projects and individual initiatives using better way principles to make the world a better place. One lovely one that came in recently was from a young husband and father from Canada who’s used poetry to express his feelings about the last three years.

Shannon Lavelle describes himself as a vaccine injured, stay home Dad, with a side hustle business who writes poetry in his spare time!  It seems that Covid inspired this beat poetry and creative dissidence, with Shannon producing a book called Dad Awake Tales 2022. Poetry, Songs, Stories and Prose (Born of Turbulent Times). It’s a lovely piece of work that he says was born out of the emotional roller-coaster of the last few years, to cope with the increasing insanity in the world. Using classical poetic forms from all over the world and inserting modern-day content and critique, his poetry is quite special.

You can find it here: DadAwake Tales 2022: Poetry, Songs, Stories and Prose (Born Of Turbulent Times) - Kindle edition by Lavelle, Shannon. Politics & Social Sciences Kindle eBooks @ Amazon.com.

Shannon says his writings are a reaction to government and institutional meltdown, as well as humans and society tearing each other apart in ways he never thought possible. All of these factors motivated him to use the written word to try to get people to open their eyes, switch off propagandized mainstream media, and focus on getting our world back on track. He wants us to reflect and learn from the last three years to make a better world for our children. Or at least a world similar to the one that many of us who are older were lucky enough to grow up in.

He is so moved by the World Council For Health’s work, and in particular the Better Way Conference that he has penned this special poem just for us and set it to a beat. It’s included at the end of this article.

Creativity and art are integral to a better way. Activism takes many forms and has many faces. We’d like to thank Shannon for taking the time to create this Better Way poem for us. We plan to share it at the conference in June as we know you will be watching online.

If you are inspired by Shannon’s poem below why not write your own beat poem and post in the comments below or send it to the substack email.

Poem spoken by Shannon Lavelle:

Shannon’s poem set to house music: