Through the Global Vaccine Poem Project, teachers are getting students in public schools to create prayers for the vaccine.
Book author and senior editor of The Stream John Zmirak reported about a "messianic take on the abortion-tainted vaccine." This particular stanza, for example, comes from a poem that only missed an "amen" to sound like a real prayer:
"Save us, dear vaccine.
Take us seriously.
We had plans.
We were going places.
Children in kindergarten.
So many voices, in chorus.
Give us our world again!"
"Who thought it was a good idea to have public schoolteachers assign their students to write little prayers to the vaccine? Cut it out. It gives your game away," Zmirak commented.
In a related report, the vaccine advocacy organization Global Vaccine Poem has called on the public to compose verses to its COVID-19 shot.
The poem, composed by Young People's Poet Laureate Naomi Shihab Nye, served as the basis for the Global Vaccine Poetry initiative, which encourages anyone to contribute to a collaborative poem, reports USA Today.
Tyler Meier, the director of the University of Arizona Poetry Center, was participating on a conference call with officials from COVID-19 immunization programs discussing ways that the arts may aid such programs. Once he came up with the concept, Meier contacted the director of the Wick Poetry Center at Kent State, David Hassler, who utilizes internet channels to promote poetry as a communal art form. Hassler suggested to poet Naomi Shihab Nye that they collaborate.
According to the project's press release, their goal is to promote "large-scale vaccination efforts and personal, individual responses to the historic challenges brought on by COVID-19."
The number of visitors to the website has reportedly increased to 8,000 in the last five weeks, resulting in an addition of 1,200 stanzas. People respond with feelings ranging from longing for what life was like previously to expectations for what may be in the future.
The cooperation between the University of Arizona and Kent State University in this collaborative project continues as both administrators Hassler and Meier are continuing to search for sponsorship and possible foundations that could help promote and disseminate the project as far as possible, "including primary education institutions," reports Daily Wild Cats.
"We have a desire to harness the imaginative language of poetry in the human imagination to assist our science in addressing a public health crisis. And, you know, the simple and very accessible prompts on the website invite people of all backgrounds to participate in the making of poetry and the nourishment of poetry," said David Hassler.
The university's news outlet noted that Meier likened the effort to a type of "positive contagion, as opposed to the one that we're trying to defeat," asserting that it is mostly made up of people who are more aware of COVID-19 and use that knowledge to advocate on a local, national, and worldwide level.
"It's a rich archive that kind of tells the story of what it is like to be living in this moment, to have endured the pandemic and to be living through it," he said.
Participants in the project may choose from four basic writing prompts such as "Dear Vaccine" and "Vaccine, please," in response to four short model poems prepared by Naomi Shihab Nye. The contributions have been utilized in exhibitions and on public radio in Ohio.
Editor's note: Zmirak also pointed out that as per LifeSite News, researchers are looking for ways to create vaccines that will come in the form of a "wafer" - similar to those communion hosts used at a Catholic church. This elicited responses from people, particularly comments about the so-called "church" of COVID.
