For Catechism and Pussy Riot:An Introduction 1

This introduction was written for the anthology Catechism, in support of Pussy Riot, edited by Mark Burnhope, Sarah Crewe and Sophie Mayer via English PEN, that appeared on the 1 October to coincide with the original date for the appeal, which has now been postponed to the 10 October. I am posting it here by agreement with the editors and am doing so in three parts, of which this is the first.


An anthology of poems dedicated to a political purpose is not so much an anthology of poems as a political act in poetic form. 

There is a long history of such anthologies including 100 Poems Against The War, edited by Todd Swift at the time of the Iraq War in 2003, and, about ten years before that,  Klaonica: Poems for Bosnia, edited by Ken Smith and Judy Benson. The two were different in that 100 Poems was an act of protest about a war in which the UK and US were the initiators and actors, whereas the second was to raise money for victims of a war fared by others, the contributing poets being helpless observers. The poets in Klaonica were not taking the Serbian or Bosnian or, for that matter, the Croatian side, but donating work to relieve suffering much as they might donate money. 

These are many other causes in which poets might do the same - hospitals, libraries, celebrations, childhood and so forth  but from the political point of view 100 Poems and Klaonica represent the two main forms.

Catechism is of the second kind. It has been rapidly compiled by its editors to protest - from the outside, as it were - against the two-year sentence imposed on Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, Maria Alyokhina and Yekaterina Samutsevich, three members of a much larger (twelve to fifteen members) punk band known as Pussy Riot, for staging a brief masked performance in the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour in Moscow. The performance by five members of the band was quickly put up on YouTube and within eleven days two of the performers, Tolokonnikova and Alyokhina, were under arrest. Thirteen days later Samutsevich was also arrested. The two remaining members of the performing  band have, it is presumed, gone abroad to avoid arrest. The song the band was singing at the time was a raucous prayer asking The Mother of God to chase away President Putin. The two-year sentence is due to be appealed on 1 October, 2012....