Politics in Verse

The pen is mightier than the sword—or so the saying goes. Governments around the world seem to take it seriously when they censor or ban literary texts, and when they imprison or exile writers out of fear of the power of their words. 

Here on the slopes of hills, facing the dusk and the cannon of time

Close to the gardens of broken shadows,

We do what prisoners do,

And what the jobless do:

We cultivate hope.

(From: Under Siege by Mahmoud Darwish)

In 2000, Israel’s minister for education, Yossi Sarid, sought to include Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish’s work in school curricula. Following this suggestion, other government members threatened to raise a motion of no-confidence against Sarid. Darwish’s comment on the matter was, “[i]t is difficult to believe that the most militarily powerful country in the Middle East is threatened by a poem.”

In a moment when even one word is excess,

a tree, a stone, a sparrow, stones to death, and gallows,

are all shadows of a hand that assumes that the world must be cleared of 

certain things.

(from: Insomnia by Mohammad Mokhtari)

Between 1988 and 1998, over 80 Iranians were killed for political reasons—among them, the activist and poet Mohammad Mokhtari, who was also a member of the banned Association of Iranian Writers. About two decades later, poetry is still censored in Iran, at times seemingly arbitrarily, and some poets are forced into exile. “If I am a woman, I cannot write the word ‘body’ in my poetry but men can do so. I cannot write about my body and even the body itself,” exiled Iranian poet Sepideh Jodeyri explained in an interview in 2014. “I wrote about a poet who had passed away. His death was not a political issue—he died because of an illness—and I wrote a poem on his behalf. He once told a story about how his body had changed, but because I wrote the word ‘body,’ the poem was completely censored from my book.” But still, these poets keep writing using word play and metaphors to hide the true meaning of their poems between the lines.

They will say, let there be no voice

Let there be no color, they will say

You have rebelled by laughter

[...]

They will hold Hope at gunpoint

You have rebelled, running

They will put the blame on you

Let us run then.

(From: Contagious Courage by Selahattin Demirtaş)

In November 2016, the Kurdish politician Selahattin Demirtaş was sentenced to five months in prison in Turkey. There, he wrote the poem Bulaşıcı Cesaret (Contagious Courage), which was consequently banned with the justification that it contains “terrorist propaganda.”

The pen is mightier than the sword—the saying goes, and words hold a power that violence and oppression never can. Poetry, in particular, seems to be an excellent weapon of choice as it can convey political messages in just a few verses or even between the lines.

In 1985, Audre Lorde wrote: “For women, then, poetry is not a luxury. It is a vital necessity of our existence. It forms the quality of the light within which we predicate our hopes and dreams toward survival and change, first made into language, then into idea, then into more tangible action. Poetry is the way we help give name to the nameless so it can be thought. The farthest horizons of our hopes and fears are cobbled by our poems, carved from the rock experiences of our daily lives.” Hers is an observation that does not apply to women alone but to all those who hope for and dream of “survival and change.” 

The pen is mightier than the sword—the saying goes. While the sword demands respect and obedience under the threat of violence, the pen fuels dreams of what could be and sparks hope.

Written by Merle Emrich.

Cover image by Merle Emrich.