The whole subject of censorship is a broad one. I would think such a
terrible incident as the Kirkup trial has inhibited greatly those poets
writing. Literary structures shouldn't have building codes to follow. As in
one can't build a brothel or topless bar in the vicinity of a school or
church.
What about the academics of the UK? Do they rock their society with protest
poems of social grievances, testimonials to ills of piety, apathy. Where's
the literary assassin, the conscience of the literary movements? Think the
academics may be asleep, thinking they're not wishing to risk the scandal of
writing about social issues.
When the last time a poet wrote about drug abuse or hungry children.
Do academics dare to stray? Are they tight-lipped?
I like writers who take chances. Who have some social responsibility.
It was Allan Ginsberg who was ostracized a few decades ago for his poem
"Howl". I think the outrage came from the academic side in America, as he
revealed that he write most of the poem on drugs. Grass or hashish.
Myself I have attempted to make it a point in my writing of formal light
verse to write about gay issues, abortion, AIDS, sexism. Light Verse For A
Decadent Age
http://www.gcpress.com/gcjournal
Beware the ignorant ground swell
Of falsehoods that men tell---
Women be of little worth
Who have not given birth.
In view of the rapidly increasing trend
For men to love men, and women to love women,
Know it is not so much the act of love that does offend,
But the straight and narrow come round to its crooked end.
***
Young girls lose their virginity,
A predicament much misunderstood—
That as many virgin young men
Lose as much and gain their manhood.
****
Unjust be done again—
Man be born to sin,
Woman to bear the kin.
***
How sad that unwed mothers relegated,
When women be found impregnated
The men be much celebrated.
Low the game and the titillated.
***
Tonight all is pure and right.
The wives lie down with their husbands,
The mistresses lie down with their misters,
And the sisters lie down with their sisters,
There are young men with young men ---
And no one has committed a sin,
And all over town there's not a sense
Of impropriety, nor heightened anxiety.
None are guilty and gone be the Age of Piety.
****
Recently I have submitted and had prose verses accepted about infant crib
death, masturbation (Christ masturbating) and another called Mother Teresa's
Vagina. I have made it a point to write erotic poetry and publish it on the
net.
Snakeskin has a censorship page in which my verse "The Holy Cuckoldry"
appears. About Joseph watching at the virgin Mary is raped by an angel in a
field. It was a response to the Kirkup poem.
Ernest Slyman
HomePage
www.geocities.com/soho/7514
email: [log in to unmask]
"All around the hours run swift
their foolish errands."
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