In India, the author of a viral poem about Narendra Modi’s handling of Covid-19 has been demonised. But all around the world, from Myanmar to Belarus, poets are being persecuted
Dictators know the power of the spoken word. Many of them wrote poems – Stalin, Mao and Radovan Karadžić (whose work was published in a Slovakian magazine). Saddam Hussein made gifts of verse to the American soldiers guarding him in his final years. Other dictators dabbled, but were mainly inspired. Pol Pot recited Verlaine. Mussolini venerated Gabriele d’Annunzio. Still others banned poetry from their republics. After Augusto Pinochet’s death, it was discovered that he had one of the largest libraries in Latin America, with more books in it than the number of people he’d had tortured; poetry and fiction, though, were negligible. Regardless of their poetic affiliations, dictators sense the danger of poetry, which is why poets in their regimes are routinely imprisoned, tortured, killed or forced into exile.
In 1964, the 23-year-old Joseph Brodsky was put on trial in Leningrad for social parasitism. During this time in the Soviet Union, all able-bodied adults were expected to work till retirement. Over the course of two hearings recorded by Frida Vigdorova, a judge harangues Brodsky; tells him to stand straight, look at the court, stop taking notes. The judge does not seem to believe Brodsky when he says: “It’s work to write poems.” He wants to know what Brodsky’s regular job is, can he support his family with this income, how is he being useful to the motherland? Over and over, the judge refers to his “so-called poems”. “Why do you say my poems are so-called poems?” Brodsky asks. “Because we have no other impression of them,” the judge replies.
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