So Who's the Victim Now?

It seems that Patrick Jones' controversial collection of poetry Darkness Is Where The Stars Are will now have a reading hosted by Lib-Dem AM Peter Black and Cardiff South Labour AM Lorraine Barrett, and Jones has been invited to read his work at next year’s Hay-on -Wye festival.

However, something that does rather weaken Jones' case that that he was an innocent victim of a Christian hate group is the fact that he actually e-mailed his poems to every nutcase extremist group he could think of in order to "spark debate". Clearly this publicity was something that he deliberately courted and presumably relished. Christian Voice duly rose to the challenge and inadvertently gave Jones the best advertising blast he could have dreamed of.

(So interesting that in the BBC radio interview Jones actually denies having sent them to Stephen Green! Why on earth does he chose to lie?)

Mr. Guo sent me a link to the poems Green is reacting to on the Forever Delayed forum. I'm sorry, I'm all for Jones' right to put them into a public arena ... but these poems are so utterly banal (think Vogon!) one wonders how they even got published in the first place!

It's sad when battles about freedom of speech (which have to be fought ... against those who would silence voices, against the bookshop which doesn't defend its authors) serve the interests of the mediocre writer.

Update 12/12 :

Patrick Jones read his "blasphemous poems" from Darkness Is Where the Stars Are at the Welsh assembly, and about 250 Christian activists (predictably) turned up to demonstrate by singing hymns and praying outside. Said Liberal Democrat assembly member Peter Black :

I felt very strongly that no organisation should be able to intimidate and force the cancellation of a reading of this sort. ... This is a democratic society, with freedom of speech and freedom of expression, and people shouldn't be intimidated into giving that up. The Welsh Assembly is the home of Welsh democracy, so it seemed highly appropriate to do a reading here. ... My view is that freedom of speech is also the freedom to offend – once you start trying to limit [speech] on the basis that you find the view offensive, you start on a slippery slope towards dictatorship and losing your rights. That's why we staged the event.

Did Waterstones Wimp Out ? You Betcha

Has Waterstones lost its spine? A contributor called Brett on the political blog Harry's Place certainly thinks so.

The British bookstore chain pulled the plug on a booksigning by South Wales poet and playwright Patrick Jones at the 11th hour because of threats of protest from Christian extremists. He was due to launch a new poetry collection Darkness is Where the Stars Are.

Stephen Green (right) and campaigning organisation Christian Voice vowed to disrupt the event if it went ahead, saying that the book was "blasphemous".

In the end the poet had to sign copies in the street.

So what was so controversial about the poems? Jan Fortune -Wood, commissioning editor at Cinnamon Press (which published the book) :

A few of the poems deal with Patrick’s strong views on religion, particularly the way in which it is often associated with military conflict, the subjugation of women or movements that exclude the ‘outsider’. These are issues that art should rightly be pushing to the forefront of debate in a liberal society and there are people of faith who are concerned with such issues as well as humanists and secularists.

William Crawley on the BBC website says :

Mr Jones is plainly a poet who addresses political and religious themes in his work. In this collection, some poems explore the portrayal of women and some deal with the relationship between Jesus and Mary Magdalene. He uses language that is, at times, raw. He would not be the first poet to address these themes or to use raw language.

But as Fortune-Wood goes on to say :

Debate is not served by caving in to extremists, who do not even represent the majority of Christians, let alone the values of civil, liberal society, but proceed by threat and intimidation.

Surely a bookstore has a duty to support its authors - from whom it makes its money, after all, and it's necessary to stand up against all who would silence a writer's voice. (Or the space for other voices shrinks away too.)

It's the job of the British police to offer protection against intimidation and thuggery, should the bounds of legitimate protest be overstepped.

You can hear both Jones and Green talking on the BBC Wales website.

Here is the publisher's statement :



If you feel strongly about the issue, do drop an e-mail to Gerry Johnson, Waterstone's Managing Director at gerry.johnson@waterstones.com . (Be polite, please!)

You can also support Patrick Jones by buying a copy of his book from Cinnamon Press or from Amazon. (Mine is on the way!)

Postscript :

Carrie Dunn on the Guardian blog calls Waterstones "cowardly".

(Thanks, Jilly Kidd, a Second Life friend, for bringing this issue to my attention yesterday.)