Portsmouth poet Richard Williams reflects on censorship and social media after his comment mentioning Palestine was blocked by Facebook.
I am performing some poetry at Victorious Festival in August. It’s a 12-minute set at 12.15 PM on the Saturday. Maybe I’ll see some of you there. I wanted to share a comment on an article by someone else about the poetry events happening that day.
First, a little context: Victorious Festival is owned by Superstruct. Superstruct is owned by KKR, a US-based private equity firm, and KKR invests in Israeli defence companies and others involved in settler colonialism in the Occupied West Bank. In response to the backlash around this, which happened after last year’s widely reported events at the festival itself, Superstruct say that all festival revenue remains in the Superstruct business system.
I was torn about appearing at the festival because of some of KKR’s investments and activities, but decided to do so on the basis that at least some of what I would perform would reflect on what is happening in the Middle East.
So to my Facebook comment, which stated:
‘Looking forward to performing some of my sequence of poems about the flora and fauna of Palestine.’
That was it.
That’s all I had to write for a comment to be pulled from a Facebook post. The P word. I assume it’s that one. Unless Facebook is trying to stem a flood of dodgy content about plants and wildlife, which is somewhat unlikely. Theoretically possible, but no.
It’s the P word.
Here’s the thing Meta: blocking a word does not make the issue go away. Or maybe it does. If we can’t see content about it, do most of us forget?
Palestine Sunbird
Iridescence on pitch-night
blue in black, green in black
flashes of orange gold
as if a sun-strike
as if a breaking through
you don’t see it then you do
you know it’s always here
non-migratory
amongst weathering trees
amongst ghosts of what once was
amongst all that still might be
Cinnyris osea,
the holy sunbird
steadfast in survival
in the Levant’s smoke-filled air.
Image entitled ‘Guernica on West Bank wall’ by Travel 2 Palestine reproduced under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 licence.
