Last week we invited people to respond poetically to the news of the suspicious death of the Russian dissident politician using the Otwituary form (i.e. <280 characters). Here are the responses we received, with many thanks.
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If you would speakup, know this;
the right word is a wedging of doors,
a filling of lamps, a bending of bars,
a flare shot into the sky, a hand
raised to say no more, a tuning fork
before the choir howls, maybe not
today, or tomorrow, but sometime.
Andy Jackson
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Show-trialled in the State’s glass box
Navalny’s truth escaped all locks
while the gun-faced thug who put him in it
lies in solitary within it.
W. N. Herbert
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You stood hair shorn to humiliate
half hidden by bars defiantly smiling
setting in minds a different picture
from that your oppressor would paint
we will trace our own conclusions
history will trace time
knowing you lit lives beyond tyranny
and drew hope.
Janet Crawford
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‘You gave me my shoe-size in earth with bars around it.
Where did it get you? Nowhere.’ Osip and I are laughing
like fools because many people have lips, that shape words.
There is no such thing as silence. Osip screams, as do I.
Jennifer Compton
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A fresh solidarity
of cut flowers rises
at the Solovetsky Stone
Keren MacPherson
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new boots and pantisocracies 