hanging | Clattery MacHinery on Poetry

November 18, 2007

World Samina Malik Day December 6th

Filed under: 20th century poetry, 20th century poets, 21 century poetry, 21st century poets, American poets, bad breath, BBC, beheading, Best American Poetry, Blair, Body Count, Boston Review, Bush, composing poetry, craft of poetry, culture, dead poets, death poetry, English poets, European poetry, European poets, experimental poetry, freedom, freedom of speech, George W. Bush, Gore Vidal, hanging, Harry Mathews, horror, horror poetry, Ice T, imprisoned poets, Islam, Islamophobia, Jack Kerouac, lawyers, Lyrical Terrorist, Mary Warnock, Middle East, minorities, murder, online poetry, online poetry writing, Out for Justice, poems, poetic license, poetry, poetry writing, poets, political poetry, politics, pop culture, prison, racism, religion, religious poetry, Saddam Hussein, Samina Malik, Scotland Yard, sonnets, Steven Seagal, terrorism, Terrorism Act, The Cure, The Police, thought crime, Tony Blair, violence, war poetry, Wilfred Owen, World Have Your Say, writing, writing poetry — Clattery MacHinery @ 1:53 am

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I remember this sister from another forum

I’m sure she is sorry for what has happend and didnt mean any harm by it

May Allaah help her, prison is a horrible place

–Niqaabis
IslamicAwakening.com

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Samina Malik became the first woman convicted under Great Britain’s Terrorism Act. She wrote poetry about terrorist acts, such as how to behead. She downloaded files, such as the one called How To Win Hand-to-hand Fighting, a manual for a sniper rifle, and the (relatively useless) Mujahideen Poison Handbook by Abdel Azez. Such downloading the folks at Scotland Yard consider “a serious criminal offense.” (See Sean O’Neill’s article in The Times: Poetic shop assistant guilty of building library of terror.)

Writing is not doing. A writer needs to be able to write whatever comes to her. No matter what real terrorist activity Samina Malik may, may not, or may some day be into, her writing is not, and must not be considered terrorist activity.

Every poet, in pursuit of the creative, has to be able to explore and fail, just as people who sing most often cannot carry the tune. And we cannot be out giving poetry licenses to people before they can participate in such activity. Each one of us must have poetic license.

Samina Malik was affected by the videos of beheading that were on the web, and decided to try her hand at the horror genre. A writer needs to be able to research, and explore sensitive territory, such as the info she downloaded–even live it to some degree, vis a vis Jack Kerouac. Period. And whether she is imprisoned for it or not, the next writer will do the same, whether he is imprisoned for it or not, and then the next.

I wonder, following her notoriety, how many others have gone looking to explore that “terrorist” information–and if they are poets, how much bad poetry will come from it. I went looking to download it myself, and could not find the links, otherwise I would share them with you.

[Edited in Nov 26: al Qaeda manual. Thanks to and note: ian.]

If a link appears on my monitor, here in my home, just as if it appears on a bookshelf, here in my home, I will open it, as I should be free to do. My judgment, nobody else’s. Period. Imprison me if you want, but another good citizen will follow me in turn, and you can imprison her too, and the next.

Instead of prosecuting and imprisoning her, we should celebrate a World Samina Malik Day, when we all dress up as her, or as close to it as we can, and download the information she did, the jihad encyclopedia, the poisons handbook, the sniper and hand-to-hand combat manuals–and then write on it. She is due to be sentenced on December 6th. This should be the day. If we cannot find the material for download that she did, note both the failed beheading scene, how hand-to-hand combat is won creatively, and the impending beheading at the end of this scene in Steven Seagal’s Out for Justice (WARNING: FOUL LANGUAGE):

Out for Justice: Bar Scene (‘Anybody seen Richie?’):

Or find something that works even better for you, The Godfather maybe, some documentary, something with violence or horror.

Let’s also make her rich with a Samina Malik line of clothing. She represents the average person’s freedom on this shared Earth of ours.

Just as most every other poet who has tried his or her hand at erotica, war poetry, love poetry, and the horror genre, and has then written in support of Samina Malik, I too was affected by a killing and wrote a syllabic sonnet sequence about it. It is here: Saint Anselm and the Murder of Addie Hall in New Orleans on October 5, 2006. (Also, see Hari Kunzru’s article for The Guardian: Terror stricken. And read Noorjehan Barmania’s ‘I have much in common with Samina Malik’.)

I wish I knew more about how Wilfred Owen’s poetry was brought out at Ms. Malik’s trial, but he is a poet who was able to cast killing into poetry, a difficult thing to do. Like Malik’s, my stab at it doesn’t approach Owen’s:

by Wilfred Owen

Parable of the Old Men and the Young

So Abram rose, and clave the wood, and went,
And took the fire with him, and a knife.
And as they sojourned both of them together,
Isaac the first-born spake and said, My Father,
Behold the preparations, fire and iron,
But where the lamb for this burnt-offering?
Then Abram bound the youth with belts and straps,
And builded parapets and trenches there,
And stretched forth the knife to slay his son.
When lo! an angel called him out of heaven,
Saying, Lay not thy hand upon the lad,
Neither do anything to him. Behold,
A ram caught in a thicket by its horns;
Offer the Ram of Pride instead of him.
But the old man would not so, but slew his son. . . .

Even though Malik basically failed at it, some positives are that she cast the poem onto the page with care for line breaks, and made her writing very understandable. She’s sort of an advanced beginner like many of us, and I would encourage her to continue writing. Furthermore, the matter-of-factness has her readership recall terrorist activity so much so, that she got convicted as if she really were a terrorist.

recast from excerpts found on the web

by Samina Malik

How to Behead

Hold him
Tie the arms behind his back
And bandage his legs together
Just by the ankles
Blindfold the punk
So that he won’t hesitate as much
For on seeing the sharp pointy knife
He’ll begin to shake
And continuously scream like an eedyat
And jiggle like a jelly
Trust me–this will sure get you angry
It’s better to have at least two or three brothers by your side
Who can hold the fool
Because as soon as the warm sharp knife
Touches his naked flesh
He’ll come to know what’ll happen
It’s not as messy or as hard as some may think,
It’s all about the flow of the wrist.
No doubt that the punk will twitch and scream
But ignore the donkey’s ass
And continue to slice back and forth
You’ll feel the knife hit the wind and food pipe
But don’t stop
Continue with all your might.
About now you should feel the knife vibrate,
You can feel the warm heat being given off,
But this is due to the friction being caused.

Tomorrow, let’s all go and kill someone with her poems. We’ll print them out, and drop them onto people’s heads from rooftops. We’ll roll them into balls and throw them at passersby. We’ll roll them into tubesticks and hit people we approach over the head with them. We’ll get bad breath and recite them.

There are criticisms that her writing is not really poetry, that its main purpose is to incite terrorist activity. Can we call instructions for beheading poetry at all? Here is a poem, written by Harry Mathews, published by the Boston Review, and anthologized in The Best American Poetry 2002, wherein the instructions are how to make eggs, no metaphor, no symbols, no mystic “aha” experience: Butter and Eggs.

If there can be a poem about how to make eggs, then there can be a poem about how to kill. Indeed, there are many movies and many novels out there that instruct viewers on different ways people can be brought to death. We must keep our poets free. We must not silence them, either by cutting out their tongues, by killing them, nor by capturing them for imprisonment.

There is another side to this also, and that is Samina Malik: impressionable daughter of Great Britain. It’s a little late to be raising children, exposing them to world violence and such, telling them that Bush and Blair are criminals and should be hung like Hussein, and then telling them it’s not okay to write about it when they become young adults, that they will be jailed for it.

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On November 16th, the BBC radio program, World Have Your Say, discussed Samina Malik’s situation in terms of a thought crime. That segment begins 12:17 into the show and features Baroness Mary Warnock and Gore Vidal, along with several bloggers: BBC: WHYS: Bangladesh, thought crimes, the dollar (mp3) (while available).