Bahraini poet Ayat al-Gormezi freed!

Ayat al-Gormezi

Due most likely to international protest, Bahraini poet Ayat al-Gormezi has been recently freed after being sentenced on 12 June 2011 to a one-year prison term for reciting a poem critical of her government's anti-democratic regime. Bahrain's National Court accused al-Gormezi of “inciting hatred of the regime and of being involved in a rally to commit crimes.” While in prison she was subjected to terrible indignities:

Media reports indicate that since being in custody Ayat, a student teacher, has been beaten across the face with an electric cable, spent nine days in a tiny cell with the air conditioning turned to freezing, and was forced to clean with her bare hands toilets just used by police. Almost certainly as a result of this brutal treatment, Ayat on 21 June 2011 made a televised apology to the Bahraini king and prime minster for what she had said and done (from Change.org)

Below is the text of her poem (reprinted with permission):

Khalifa

By Ayat al-Gormezi

Hear me:

You, the elder,
the “good man”, who “safeguards justice”
(so you have always declared),

if I were to make excuses for you,
I, for you,
for the things you have done,
I would only look the fool,
for you would continue in your ways,
and murder us as “traitors”.

Hear me:
Hear us all, for we all demand likewise -
both sects, all Bahrainis:

You must go.
Take His Majesty with you,
and leave your deeds behind.

You, oppressor,
from where do you derive your power,
the power to keep your people down? -
all your people,
even women
even children
even men.
Yet you call for “dialogue”,
even in the midst of your brutality?

No! … No! …
One word: No!
One demand:
Give us back our Bahrain.
Return this country to its people;
to us, its people.

Our Bahrain is ours.

I've dared in a previous post on Mohamed Bouazizi (the Tunisian fruit and vegetable vendor whose self-immolation started a revolution) to herald this type of poet (& poetry) as the new world avant-garde. I stand by that claim. I wrest that title from its self-satisfied academic usurpers and give it to writers who matter. A forward-looking poetics can no longer be separated from the all too real material conditions of life for which the Tunisian has chosen death to official tyranny & al-Gormezi has had to suffer the worst sorts of human mistreatment.

When will the anthology for the new avant-garde be compiled?