"When two silences rub together the fire of poetry sparks and ignites..."

The poems in Ode to the Vaccinated Dead and Other Poems and Plays were inspired by the silences of the pandemic period – the silence of our physicians and institutions and the silencing of those with doubts about the experimental injection. Witnessing a massive transfer of wealth concurrent with the pandemic declaration, Richard Olafson questioned whether worldwide measures were solely about protecting health. As a poet he responded through poetry, with deep metaphor providing a bellweather for truth. Observing that the genetic bio-weapon facilitated both a vast money transfer from citizens to corporations and first steps towards a long-planned New World Order, he responded with the poem “Blockchain Dawn.”

Like many commentators he also witnessed an apparent mass psychosis obscuring the unprecedented number of documented injuries and deaths associated with the rushed vaccine, leading to his poem “Counting the Dead.” As coercive measures and protocols with no scientific basis were imposed, the poet asked whether these were instruments of a would-be one-world government, indoctrinating the next generation into a controlled and surveilled society. At the root of the Great Reset’s plan to radically transform culture, Olafson noted the re-emerging depopulation agenda of a dormant Eugenics movement. Poetry became a weapon to disarm this crime against humanity and its assault on the human spirit. Affirming this very humanity, the spiritual spark within all, the enduring flame of poetry, pushes back against the dark. In this courageous volume, Richard Olafson’s poetry both memorializes those who suffered injuries or loss and celebrates the living spark, the creative imagination, that vanquishes darkness.

Richard Olafson is an editor, poet, book designer and publisher. A long-time Victoria resident, he is active in many community organizations. Richard Olafson has published a number of books and chapbooks, among them Blood of the Moon, Cloud on My Tongue, An Island In the Light and There Are Some Men So Unlucky They Do Not Even Have Bodies. He attended the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics (at Naropa) in its second year of operation, studying with William Burroughs, Anne Waldman, Gregory Corso and Allen Ginsberg He was much influenced the following year by taking classes from Warren Tallman at UBC’s English Department. He has published, in his career as a publisher, over 850 books. He lives in Victoria with his family and partner poet, singer and songwriter Carol Sokoloff.