The debate about poetry and politics, and the difference between poetry as propaganda and poetry as articulation of human hope and hunger, is much, much more than a hermeneutical conversation piece between academics. I came to this conclusion by reading "cup poetry".
Cup Poetry is a way of crying, an attempt to find purpose in years of weeping. Cup Poetry gives voice to the unlistened to, even if that voice is heard only by the speaker. Cup Poetry tells of terror, dread and loss of self, in the hope that another human being will hear – and care. Some cup poems are the condensation of human anguish into tears, then used to inscribe and describe despair. Cup poetry is the name for poems scratched on styrofoam cups with pebbles; poems written in toothpaste; poems passed in fragments from cell to cell to preserve as much of them as possible. Anyway, poems written out of unimaginable suffering, composed under atrocious conditions of deprivation, each one demonstrating the capacity of human beings to face the disintegration of life, relationships and personal identity by ordering word and thought into a poetics of suffering.
That is the best I can do to describe the experiences out of which the volume Poems from Guantanamo: The Detainees Speak, was born. This volume and these poems created the term, "cup poetry".
The very existence of Guantanamo calls in question the moral principles and political rationale for our way of life, which claims to be based on such foundations as freedom, justice, rule of law and respect for persons. When these foundations are subverted by the actions of military power driven by political rage, the victims are stripped of those defining rights to life and status as human beings without which human community isn't worth the candle, and our own moral principles turn toxic. It is one of the tragic ironies of the past few years, that the "fabric of cruelty" out of which Guantanamo has been tailored, has enmeshed untried detainees who demonstrate in poetry written under such conditions, the nature and beauty of language shaped to human suffering. Poetry as articulated suffering serves to highlight the moral diminishment of their captors and torturers. Cup poetry has captured the captive voices of those detained without trial. The poems are spoken with fading hope into the deafening maelstrom of counter-terrorist rhetoric, illustrating why poetry has its own non-violent potency when faced with the savage consequences of dehumanising others in the interests of national security and the myths of Empire.
Cup poetry exists as protest, and exerts both moral and political claim upon a world that has tolerated the obscenity of Guantanamo. But more than protest – cup poetry is an affirmation of human dignity and worth that has miraculously survived the most systematic and mechanistic attempts to erase the humanity of the detainees. Cup poetry as protest and affirmation of human worth creates a further impetus towards understanding the role of poetry as a conversation with theology. Whatever else Guantanamo means, it represents an offence to any moral theology of justice; it boasts a degradation of human values and a refusal to countenance any limit to the exercise of power over the powerless. Any redemptive vision is hinted at, not in the ideology of the Guantanamo regime – but in the poetry of its prisoners.
What does all this mean for Western Christianity confronting global Islam?
How does a poetics of suffering compete with the rhetoric that spawns slogans such as "war on terror"?
Here is a poem, etched originally on smuggled fragments of a styrofoam cup, words against the powers.
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Is It True?
By Osama Abu Kadir
Is it true that the grass grows again after rain?
Is it true that the flowers will rise up again in the Spring?
Is it true that birds will migrate home again?
Is it true that the salmon swim back up their streams?
It is true. This is true. These are all miracles.
But is it true that one day we'll leave Guantanamo Bay?
Is it true that one day we'll go back to our homes?
I sail in my dreams. I am dreaming of home.
To be with my children, each one part of me;
To be with my wife and the ones that I love;
To be with my parents, my world's tenderest hearts.
I dream to be home, to be free from this cage.
But do you hear me, oh Judge, do you hear me at all?
We are innocent, here, we've committed no crime.
Set me free, set us free, if anywhere still
Justice and compassion remain in this world!
"Shortly
after 11 September, Osama Abu Kadir travelled to Pakistan to perform
charity work in Afghanistan with the Islamic missionary group Tablighi
Jamat. The US claims Tablighi was providing fighters for jihad in
Afghanistan and arrested Mr Kadir near Jalalabad in November 2001. In
his native Jordan, he was known as a dedicated family man who worked as
a truck driver. In Guantanamo, he is known as prisoner number 651."
……………………………………………….
The fuller story of this remarkable book can be found here at The Independent, and here at Iowa University Press. And yes. I recognise that we live in a world of terrorist atrocities beyond any scale of moral justification, from Ground Zero to Mumbai. And I understand that extraordinary threats require extraordinary response. And that undeserved pain and innocent suffering inflicted on victims of such atrocities are themselves a negation of the deep principles of human moral existence. As such they are to be condemned, opposed, and overcome – but surely by means which do not undermine those fundamental principles of justice and humanity which every terrorist atrocity diminishes.
But responses are more than extraordinary when institutional cruelty, intelligence gathering torture, and unremitting despair tighten an already vicious circle of violence and hate. That happens when principles of freedom, justice, moral accountability and the dignity of human beings are seen as dispensable in the pursuit of military and political goals. In the non-Western world, and amongst many in our Western democracies, Guantanamo stands for an unprecedented and grievous loss of human decency and moral authority. Against this place and its purpose, these poems bear witness; and against this place, and against the terrorist violence and hatred that has spawned it, as a follower of Jesus, I pray.
Advent – peace on earth and goodwill amongst all people - is a good time to hear of the demise of such a place, and to pray for that peace which makes such places, and the terrorism used to justify them, unthinkable.