For Catechism and Pussy Riot An Introduction 3

For people on this side of the equation the issue is not so much with Putin as with what Putin represents and what Pussy Riot represent. The meaning of Pussy Riot, for many, is, as evidenced in the poems published here, less a political incident more a set of overlapping contemporary concerns and passions symbolised by the three young women. The meanings of Pussy Riot in this respect begin with what the name suggests, that’s to say feminism in its various forms and moods, from assertion of rights, through core issues of identity, down to protest at an inimical oppressive male world. This meaning - probably the most intense meaning - involves a conception of the world that is the polar opposite of Putin’s. 

Then again, since Pussy Riot calls itself, and performs as, a punk band, the meaning of the group is derived from and invites a punk aesthetic that is partly tribal, partly anarchic, looking to be disruptive of conservative views and manners in exactly the same way as Pussy Riot were disruptive in the church. 

Beyond that, the band is young: there is also the invitation to youth. It is not precisely an old-versus-young battle but, in this case, it is the young, masked and loud who are in the vanguard. For many they represent  the potential for a new and different model of Russia. 

Each of these models and antitheses is crude in itself - life, we know, is more subtle than that - but the antitheses remain. Most importantly, trumping all other concerns, is a conception of justice. It is simply wrong to jail people for that length of time for the minor office of disruption. Three unjustly sentenced individuals stand against a state led by a former operative of the KGB, a state that has seen the arrest and assassination of vocal opponents. In many ways it is like the old days: the repressive state against its dissidents, the corrupt system against those who protest against its corruption...


The anthology contains a variety of poems, some, like Andrew Bailey’s, the second of Mark Burnhope’s, Rebecca Cremin and Ryan Ormonde’s, Tim Dooley’s Charlotte Geater’s., John Ennis’s, Jay Griffth’s and others (the list is too long and I am going alphabetically) address the case directly or refer to it obliquely. More numerous are poems that are born out of a sympathetic feeling, identifying something in Pussy Riot that corresponds with the feeling of the poet in respect of feminism or authority or sheer voice quality.There may be earlier poems now grown particularly relevant. There are poems that appear on a larger map of concerns that happen to find themselves here. There are poems of various styles including Alison Croggon’s Dance of the Seven Veils, Sasha Dugdale’s Perpetual, SJ Fowler’s They, Kit Fryatt’s Sounds Like Sense, Sarah Hesketh’s sharp Some Protest Stones, Philo Ikonya and Helmut A Niederle’s Pussy Riot For Ever: The Body, Amy Key’s Cat Power, John Kinsella’s Penillion for Pussy Riot, Aoife Mannix’s The Eye of the Needle. and so on. I don’t pick these out because I think they are the best poems, only because they are broadly different. I could pick many others.

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Like any contributor to such anthologies I am fully aware that it is unlikely to affect the course of events in any measurable way, though it may perhaps add to the weight of protest that hopes, at some stage, on some level, to influence the Russian court and indeed that part of the Russian people who support the sentence.  If not that then at least it might be a consolation to Pussy Riot, and to those for whom they speak, to know that there are many people abroad - including poets - who listen to them and talk back in support. A book of poems in a foreign language published in a foreign place is rarely a factor in the decisions of a hostile administration, but this is downloadable. It may be a factor somewhere, somehow. Who can tell?  One has hope or one has nothing.

Speaking personally it is quite odd for me as an almost sixty-four year old male poet to be writing this introduction. It was odd, but rather nice to be asked on the spur of the moment and to say: yes. Of course I wondered if I was out of place. I am not looking to be cool with those younger than me or of a different gender. I have been on a few demonstrations but have never felt it to be my natural place.

I ask myself this: if the world were arrayed into forces represented by President Putin on the one side and Pussy Riot on the other I know which side I’d be on and it wouldn’t be Putin’s. That’s where we are, and that’s where this is. And that is why it is a privilege to write this introduction.