Silence is not golden
Featured Poem
There are a great number of big issues impacting on our wellbeing and welfare at the moment – energy prices, cost of living, water and so on. However, I would like to focus on one which impacts on us as artists hugely. This is the attack on Salman Rushdie. It is intolerable both on a personal level for him and on a general level to us in a free thinking and speaking society. Though I do wonder if that freedom is under attack, too, from within our own Western society.
It is said, by certain people, that Rushdie’s book, Satanic Verses is offensive. I am on record many times, and recently on LBC, saying the causing offence is one of the poorest criticisms of art there is.
To cause offence is one of the tools we, as writers, and other artists, have in our toolbox. It is a powerful tool, and we must use it carefully. We may want to cause offence to jolt people into a new mode of thinking, to surprise in order to gain attention to issues, and to entertain. I repeat here something I have already said; to cause offence is a powerful tool and must be used carefully; it must not be used to feed the fires of hatred but to build the fires that cleanse and enable the fresh and new to grow.
If people do not want to risk being offended, then they should avoid the thing that may cause offence.
The featured poem, Silence Is Not Golden, is one of my Twitter Tuesday poems; I think it speaks for itself.
Reading
I have just finished reading Kinglsley Amis’s Lucky Jim,a classic novel set in a time just before they were beginning to swim. A story about a bunch of saddos in a saddo place, in saddo times that Jim must escape. (Do not quote this description as literary criticism.) Started reading an early novel of John Le Carre, The Naïve and Sentimental Lover; could not get into this so jettisoned it. Having a go at Lovecraft . . .
Writing
At the beginning of the month spent an intense whole week with Tom, composer in The Recycling Magpie. Really enjoyable and a great deal accomplished. Now the business of keying up all the changes. Have recently written some fairly short poems . . . – Special Treat, Looping of Film Loops, My Urban River.
Have a good month, and happy writing …