Prison Poets at Guantanamo

In 2005, we took note of the story of two brothers from Afghanistan, both imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay and later released, who held onto their sanity while in prison by writing poems: “Writing poetry was the balm that kept Guantanamo prisoners from going mad,” by Thomas Coghlan (from The San Francisco Chronicle). Apparently, many of the Guantanamo detainees have been writing poems, and the image of “a Guantanamo prisoner who, denied pen and paper, uses pebbles to scratch poems on Styrofoam cups” has become an emblem of poetry’s necessity. This idea showed up as a point of debate in Poetry magazine’s very interesting January panel discussion feature by Stephen Burt, Daisy Fried, Major Jackson and Emily Warn: “Does Poetry Have a Social Function?.”

Now a few of the hundreds of poems written at Guantanamo have been translated into English and will be published in a new collection, Poems From Guantanamo: The Detainees Speak (University of Iowa Press, August 2007) -- thanks to the efforts of lit Ph.D. and defense attorney Marc Falkoff, who compiled the poems and shepherded them through the process of declassification by the U.S. military censors. Robert Pinsky read the book and commented on it for Public Radio International’s The World program: “Robert Pinsky considers Guantanamo poetry.” We’d love to hear what you have to say about this book, about prison poetry, about poetry’s social value -- just click on “comments” below to join the conversation.

from The Guardian (UK):
“Inside the Wire,” by Richard Lea
“Poetry’s capacity to rattle governments is not, it appears, confined to totalitarian regimes. A collection of poems by detainees at the US military base in Guantánamo Bay is to be published later this year, but only in the face of strong opposition by suspicious American censors.”

from The Wall Street Journal:
“The Prison Poets of Guantanamo Find a Publisher,” by Yochi J. Dreazen
“An 84-page anthology... giving readers an unusual glimpse into the emotional lives of the largely nameless and faceless prisoners there.

Related articles:
“A Morning for Prisoners,” Edwin Torres on his trip bringing poetry into St. Thomas Prison
“Poetry in Times Like These,” Victor Infante writing immediately post-9/11 on the place of poetry in time of crisis