Poetry from prison: Guantanamo detainees speak
Poetry can come from the most unlikely of places. The art form is not just limited to the world of academics (there’s plenty of poetry being written in popular MFA programs around the country) or those artsy folks that snub their collective noses at anything popular.
There’s a book of poetry from one of the places you would least expect: the infamous Camp Delta at Guantanamo Bay Cuba where many "terror" suspects are still being held indefinitely with little or no legal recourse. The book is entitled Poems from Guantanamo.
According to one article on the Guardian Unlimited website:
The poems were scratched into the cups provided to the men with their lunch and were taken away with empty plates by the guards after each meal. But their author, Shaikh Abdurraheem Muslim Dost, a Pakistani poet and prolific author before his detention, reconstructed them from memory after his release in 2005.
A year after the camp opened, detainees were finally allowed pencil and paper, the article says. But even with the proper writing instruments, there was little hope of the poems ever being read by anyone aside from a few fellow prisoners. Security concerns keep most writings by the detainees classified. Even those few who are lucky enough to have a legal counsel can hardly just hand over a stack of poems to their lawyer (and that’s assuming a lawyer can even meet with them).
Why would a bunch of prisoners, who are considered to be terrorists by most in the US, turn to poetry? For those with a little heart, I don’t think the answer is all that surprising. Here’s a quote from another article entitled ‘Inside the Wire’:
Many of the poems deal with the pain and humiliation inflicted on the detainees by the US military. Others express disbelief and a sense of betrayal that Americans – described in one poem as "protectors of peace" – could deny detainees any kind of justice. Some engage with wider themes of nostalgia, hope and faith in God.
Sadly, a lot of the best inspiration in the arts stems from painful experiences. Even people who are perceived to be the worst among us are still human. They still have families that worry about them. This is the kind of thinking that Marc Falkoff, a lawyer representing 17 of the detainees, is trying to instill in the American public:
Falkoff is hoping the collection of poems from Guantánamo Bay will put
a human face on people branded by the former American defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld as "among the most dangerous, best-trained, vicious killers on the face of the Earth".
Given that many detainees have since been released, with many more going free each year, it’s getting easier to see the fallacy of labeling someone a terrorist or murderer just because the government says so. Nevertheless, this just goes to show the true power of poetry and that it can reach across all cultures.
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