Recently, a well-known literary journal in Canada, PRISM International, issued an apology for publishing a few poems by one Stephen Brown, after an editor of his was accused of insensitivity for supporting the ex-convict. It turns out, so said the apology, the magazine did not know, when they published his poetry, that he had been convicted of a vile murder years before; that he had done his time, and, released, started a new life, writing under a pseudonym, in Mexico. Once they had realised they had published a criminal, they apologised; and soon, the cancellers had Brown's poems removed from the national Parliamentary website set up to showcase Canadian poems.
Stephen Brown was found guilty of having beaten a woman to death with another man - she was an Indigenous woman, Pamela George, and it was of course deeply painful to this decent community in Saskatchewan to know the killer was now free and apparently being feted by the great and good (the local university in Regina, and a former poet laureate). The murder is, as stated above, vile. No murder is good, this one was obviously particularly bad. However, Mr Brown went to prison; and though his sentence was seemingly light (he was out in three years) there are clearly legal complexities at work.
The concern this blog has is with the apparent precedent this call-out banning is setting, at least in Canada. Two points are to the fore:
1. The nature of justice and rehabilitation.
Canada's legal system is based on the idea that a criminal if found guilty must face the penalty the state metes out; and, if he or she behaves while incarcerated, they can be released early; inside, they can take courses, and learn to read, write, paint, or acquire a trade. They can become religious, become a law student, and overcome addictions and earlier behavioural problems. They are presumed to leave prison having paid their debt to society, and we shake their hands, wish them well, and hope they can settle back into society. The entire system of law and order depends upon this deal with the convict. It (ideally) encourages less misconduct behind bars, and avoids recidivism. If, instead, we treat criminals like pariahs, and shun them upon release, demonising them forever - we might as well send them to a Devil's Island for life.
2. The nature of literature and publishing.
The list of criminals who have written interesting, worthwhile books is astonishingly long, made longer because governments make up the laws that define what a crime is. Oscar Wilde, Dostoevsky, Sir Thomas Malory, Daniel Defoe, William S Burroughs, Jean Genet, O. Henry, Hans Fallada, Chester Himes, Anne Perry, Cervantes, de Sade, and many more, have been prisoners, or were killers or serious criminals. It is one thing to call for persons to be identified as criminals, arrested, tried, and if guilty, to be punished. However, that has little to do with the fate of their written or published books, except in the rare cases where they have sought to directly profit from the suffering of actual victims. For the most part, criminals who write, do so AFTER they are imprisoned - it stirs them to create, and renew their spirit. Far from being the works of monstrous, unrepentant fiends, the works of these artists go towards some form of amends-making. The balance sheet is impossible to square, but they try, and they can leave us great, even vital, new ideas and words.
Therefore, because writers need to be protected from having their writing and books banned, binned, burned, shunned, as if in a police state, and because justice requires we permit even the most repugnant offenders back into society when they have served their sentences, the banishing of Mr Brown's poems is an astonishingly unjust, short-sighted, ungenerous, petty reaction to the natural horror at uncovering his brutality.
No one claims Mr Brown is a genius, or that in future he deserves our especial favours; but to seek to block his poetry from being read or seen, to cancel him, is to actually deny his victim the reality of having existed and then been killed - for if we disappear Mr Brown, we also disappear the killer he was.
Better instead to face up to the realities of existence, the dangers, and problems, of being alive - for life, art and humanity are messy boiling over pots; and the dispiriting and self-destructive tendency to establish a risk-free, unpolluted zone where only good, decent people get to be heard or read makes a total nonsense of the idea of art - that it be original, daunting, disturbing, and yes, arresting.
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