A year in jail for a poem
Via “The Arabist“:
Bahrain: A year in jail for a poem
On Sunday a court in Bahrain sentenced Ayat Al Qurmazi, a 20-year-old education student, to a year in prison for insulting the king and inciting hatred. Al Qurmazi became famous after reciting poetry Pearl Square that includes the lines such as:
We are the people who will kill humiliation and assassinate misery
We are the people who will destroy the foundation of injustice
Don’t you hear their cries, don’t you hear their screamsYou can see her reciting her poetry — dedicated directly to the king — here.
According to the Associated Press, while in detention Al Qurmazi was lashed in the face with electrical cables and forced to clean toilets with her hands. Here is a Facebook page dedicated to her case.
Ursula Lindsey
“Todesguge/Deathfugue”
“Interglacial Narrows (Poems 1915-2021)”
“Always the Many, Never the One: Conversations In-between, with Florent Toniello”
“Conversations in the Pyrenees”
“A Voice Full of Cities: The Collected Essays of Robert Kelly.” Edited by Pierre Joris & Peter Cockelbergh
“An American Suite” (Poems) —Inpatient Press
“Arabia (not so) Deserta” : Essays on Maghrebi & Mashreqi Writing & Culture
“Barzakh” (Poems 2000-2012)
“Fox-trails, -tales & -trots”
“The Agony of I.B.” — A play. Editions PHI & TNL 2016
“The Book of U / Le livre des cormorans”
“Memory Rose Into Threshold Speech: The Collected Earlier Poetry of Paul Celan”
“Paul Celan, Microliths They Are, Little Stones”
“Paul Celan: Breathturn into Timestead-The Collected Later Poetry.” Translated & with commentary by Pierre Joris. Farrar, Straus & Giroux
There are no words to describe the type of people who would commit atrocities such as this. Syria, yet another in a long list of international pariahs who hold so much influence at the U.N. I don’t get it at all. I’m not even sure I would want to hear any explanation that would defend it.
A sad reminder that freedom is a never-ending destination, and a goal never universally achieved. Every day, much hard work must be done just to speak and write freely, not only in Bahrain but around the world — America included.