Poetry is dangerous business

When we think of "poetry" and "suffering," most of us probably conjure up thoughts of the starving artist living in an unheated garret apartment. But over the years, many poets have suffered much worse things than voluntary poverty and artistic obscurity. These poets were imprisoned, tortured, and in some cases killed as a direct result of their poetry.

1. Pablo Neruda: Murdered by Pinochet's regime
Nobel Prize-winning poet Pablo Neruda was an outspoken opponent of Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet's rule. Although known mainly for his love poems, Neruda was also involved with politics in his native Chile, and had close ties to the Communist party and to the Socialist president Salvador Allende. Neruda died not long after Pinochet's coup d'etat, under extremely suspicious circumstances.

The official cause of Neruda's death was prostate cancer, but for years people whispered that he had been poisoned by one of Pinochet's henchmen. In the wake of a recent exhumation and additional investigation, a judge has ruled that Neruda was murdered, and the search is on for the mysterious "doctor" who was a notorious official poisoner, and who was present at Neruda's death.

Image courtesy Flickr/treasuresthouhast

2. Liao Yiwu: Imprisoned and tortured by the Chinese government
Until the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989, Liao Yiwu had been a typical Beat-influenced poet: drinking, carousing, and indifferent to politics. But Tiananmen Square galvanized him, and he was inspired to write a rage-filled poem called "Massacre," a scathing indictment of the Chinese government's totalitarian regime.

A year later, Liao was arrested and imprisoned for four years as a counterrevolutionary. He endured a gruesome barrage of "beatings, torture, hunger and humiliations in a series of prisons" that make Abu Ghraib sound like a joke by comparison. After his release, Liao petitioned the government for an exit visa 16 times and was denied every time. Under further threat for his poetry, he finally managed to sneak out of the country into Vietnam in 2011.

3. Li Bifeng: Imprisoned and tortured by the Chinese government
Much like Liao Yiwu, Li Bifeng was imprisoned for speaking out against the Chinese government during the Tiananmen Square massacre. To make matters worse, in the government's eyes, Li Bifeng had close ties to dissident poet Liao Yiwu. The government suspected that Li helped to finance Liao's escape from China last year, although both men deny the charges.

For speaking out against the government during Tiananmen Square, Li Bifeng has served five years in jail. He was recently sentenced to an additional twelve years in jail due to "contract fraud" as a consequence of being targeted in a baseless lawsuit by a business partner.

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4. Muhammad Ibn al-Dheeb al-Ajami: Imprisoned for criticizing the government
Last November, a court in Qatar ordered the imprisonment of poet Muhammad Ibn al-Dheeb al-Ajami for poems which praised the Arab Spring uprising that has struggled to overthrow dictators and bring democracy to the Middle East.

By the time of the judgment, Ajami had already been in solitary confinement for a year, thanks to the government's dim view on his poetry. Even though Qatar has backed many Arab Spring uprisings, the Qatari government has laws which prohibit criticizing the country's ruler, an offense which carries a five year prison sentence.

5. Anonymous women of Afghanistan: Risking death to write
An underground women's literary society named Mirman Baheer, based in Kabul, networks with women all across Afghanistan who cannot risk writing their poetry down themselves. Instead, they sneak away and use illicit cell phones to call other women in safer areas of Afghanistan. The poets recite their latest work to the woman on the other end of the line, who transcribes the inflammatory verse for her.

Many poets have risked torture and death due to poems that were critical of the government. But the women of Afghanistan risk the worst consequences for simply writing anything down. Even a love poem, as innocuous as it might seem to us in the West, could get these women beaten and killed as being "proof of an illicit relationship."

One woman who was caught reciting her love poetry over the phone in this fashion was beaten by her brothers, and had her notebooks ripped up. She committed suicide two weeks later by setting herself on fire.

Image courtesy Flickr/chillihead