Poetic Injustice

Ben Wildsmith 

Our Senedd is routinely criticised, by those who oppose its existence, as either an irrelevant talking shop or a centralised expression of elitism.

Abolitionists cast it as a gerrymandered club that restricts the scope of debate in Cymru to suit the mores of a narrow political class.

The Senedd Commission’s decision to withdraw an invitation for Hanan Issa, the National Poet, to read a commissioned work at today’s opening ceremony will have delighted those critics.

Issa created her poem to a brief which specifically demanded a reminder of members’ commitment to the people of Wales and stressed that she should write the poem as she saw fit.

The poem casts politicians as gardeners, requiring skill and dedication to properly tend the nation’s concerns. A first draft set that metaphor against the scorched earth of this summer’s wildfires and the ongoing events in Gaza, amongst other urgent concerns of the day. Despite the stated acceptance of Issa’s agency to fulfil the brief as she saw fit, this first draft was rejected on the grounds that the opening ceremony was ‘apolitical’. Issa redrafted the poem, removing specific references to sensitive topics and casting its concerns in more abstract language, an effort that you might well consider generous for an artist in her position.

This too, however, was rejected, with the Commission restating its position that the ceremony must be shorn of politics, even if it resided only in the interpretation of the audience.

Firstly, nothing that happens at the Senedd is ‘apolitical’, nor should it be. It is the physical expression of our nation as a political unit, a geographical entity that has both distinctness and (limited) agency.

If its politics can be switched off when the king comes to visit, then that is a tacit agreement that political life in Cymru is an optional luxury instead of a vital right. The Senedd is politics. You might as well demand that the sea be less wet.

The question, then, becomes one of who is permitted to express their politics. Poetry fulfils a unique role in public life, reminding the collective of its responsibility to the individual, to humanity.

In South America, poets are routinely consulted on issues of the day. Their perspective is valued as a connection between tradition and modernity, society and the individual, the centre and the marginalised.

Saunders Lewis

Issa’s poem references Saunders Lewis, reminding us of the centrality that poetry sometimes assumes here too. Welsh politics is something we imagine to be informed by culture and to honour the vigour of our national ways of being.

So, what in God’s name does the Senedd Commission think it is doing policing the contributions of the National Poet? The job of the Senedd is to safeguard national life: our beliefs, passions, and preferences.

The National Poet is appointed to articulate the culture of the people, to speak where others cannot. If even she is to be subject to the censorship of an unaccountable establishment beyond the reach of our government, then what hope do the rest of us have?

Asinine

Ordinarily, the Commission is at pains to emphasise its commitment to free speech. It will defend the recent trend towards debate-wrecking sensationalism in the Siambr on those grounds, insisting that the asinine sniggerings of Joe Martin et al are beyond censure. So, why the attack of the vapours over Hanan Issa’s carefully considered poem?

Details about that decision-making process are scant, so let’s ask a couple of obvious questions.

Was the poem submitted to Buckingham Palace for approval or otherwise?

What role, if any, did the UK government play?

The Commission would, I’m sure, be anxious to dispel any suspicions that it exists solely at the pleasure of these institutions.

By this shameful act of cultural vandalism, it has betrayed not only its independence but the nation’s political dignity. Those sitting on it should apologise to Hanan Issa and to us all.

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