Two Voices Lost this Week

Harold Pinter's death on Christmas eve marks the second loss in less than a week of British writers known for their outspoken criticism of war. The other was poet Adrian Mitchell who died a last Saturday.

Pinter's career as a playwright earned him the 2005 Nobel Prize for Literature. He was outspoken publicly and often critical of the United States and even his homeland for their various foreign policies and was blisteringly critical for their parts in the Invasion of Iraq.
At one point of his life, he wrote poetry under the name "Harold Pinta."

Adrian Mitchell was a prolific poet. Like Pinter, often in the public eye with critical words for the misuse of political power and a champion of the underprivileged. I happened to be reading last Sunday at an event and chose one of his poems written during the invasion of Iraq titled "Playground." In a 2005 poll conducted by a poetry organization, his poem, "Human Beings" was voted the poem that people most wanted to send into space in the hope that it would be read a century later