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13/01/2013

Poets For Pussy Riot II: A Poem For Pussy Riot November 2012



Performing  A Poem For Pussy Riot  at Poets For Pussy Riot, The Freeword Centre, London. 21.11.12.


"Since the first Poets for Pussy Riot event, held on August 29th 2012, Nadezha Tokolonnikova and Maria Alyokhina remain in prison, serving out sentences in notorious penal colonies. The community of poets that came together then, as an act of solidarity and commitment that this injustice should not be forgotten, came together once more on November 21st, in the Free Word centre in Farringdon, in London, in association with English PEN, to mark the nine-month anniversary of Pussy Riot's protest Punk Prayer performance, which took place on February 21st 2012 in Moscow's Cathedral of Christ the Saviour. Nearly 40 poets contributed to an unforgettable evening of original poetry."

I declined to read at the initial event on the 29th of August and began an email exchange with two people about the validity of my reasons - the jist of which you'll get when you listen to the video above.
Steven Fowler later invited me to read at the second event on the 21st of November and I accepted for two reasons: 

  1. This second event was an attempt to keep the issue of the Pussy Riot members' imprisonment relevant. As such it was not aligned with the 'meme-for-all' (I am coining that phrase here and now) on social networking sites back in August; it was this situation that prevented me from contributing to the first event. 
  2. This second event would be an opportunity to, in some way, explain and express my opinions and subsequent conversations about the Pussy Riot case and its media life (and death).

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