Letter to Syndic Publisher From Author Clayton McMillan

Hi LeRoy,

If you think it’s appropriate, could you please forward the following email to Britta Kollberg?

Thanks,

Clayton McMillan

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Dear Britta,

I am a Syndic Literary Journal reader. I read your poem Wall windows, East Berlin and I listened to your narration. I found it profoundly moving, especially the way you read it

When I was an exchange student in Regensburg in 1980 the university offered foreign students a trip to Berlin.

We saw the wall. We stood on the observation deck at Checkpoint Charley and looked East. We rode the S-Bahn through the Potsdamer Platz Ghost Station.

We visited a museum in East Berlin that explained the necessity for the wall, the need to prevent white collar professionals, doctors, engineers, etc., from stealing the skills they had been given by the state and taking them to the West.

I met a Czech student who was reading George Orwell’s Animal Farm. “That’s a book about the failure of socialism,” I said. “No, it’s a book about the failure of capitalism,” he replied. With the right introduction it could be spun either way.

There will always be a spinning of the political story. But the spinning today, like in 1980, is out of control. This is why I think your poem is so important. To remind us that we’ve been through this before. Let’s not do it again.

Thank you for that reminder, which quietly hits the reader in the face, “wake up!”

Best regards,

Clayton McMillan

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Letter to Poet Britta Kollberg from Publisher LeRoy Chatfield

My Dear Britta,

I have been publishing Syndic Literary Journal now these past 12 years and this is the first time I have received such a request.  I hope this will not be the last time.

I am pleased – indeed, honored – to forward you this letter from Syndic Author Clayton McMillan.

In fact, presuming your approval, I will also forward Clayton’s letter to the Syndic Audience.

Please keep in touch, but above all, please keep writing your poetry!

All the best!

LeRoy

P.S. Have you heard from Poet Rasha Mansour in Palestine?