What Writers Owe the Dead

On Poetry, Power, Politics & Responsibility

“The stars had one only task: they taught me how to read.
They taught me I had a language in heaven
and another language on earth.” – Mahmoud Darwish, “Poetic Regulations”

Every day, across the sea from where I write these words, there are bombs falling on children in Palestine.

In the country where I write these words, the legacy and ongoing process of imperialism and colonization steal life and land from Indigenous communities. In the city where I write these words, Black and Brown people are subjected daily to police brutality, state-sanctioned murder and imprisonment, while the billionaire class has raised the cost of basic necessities such as food and housing so much that the common person cannot afford to live without enormous strain and insecurity. That same billionaire class has also invested heavily in the business of war, profiting greatly from the manufacture and sale of the bombs that are falling on children.

I suspect that every writer has fantasized at least once in their lifetime that their words might change the world for the better. The hard truth is that the best most of us may hope for is that a piece of our work, or perhaps even just a phrase or two, will linger meaningfully in the hearts of a handful of readers out there, somewhere, for a decade or so. Yet however notorious or obscure an author might be, the fundamental question we all must face (or try to hide from) in the context of contemporary literature is not so much how our work will reshape the world but how the world must shape our work:

What does a writer owe their readers? What does a writer owe other writers? What does a writer today owe the living and the dead amid the rising tides of injustice, violence, and destruction?

Professional writers of poetry and prose like myself are implicated in the politics of the world in which we write, however much we might wish this weren’t so. What for many of us begins as the naive desire to revel in the delights of storytelling or the mysteries of language is, as a profession, inevitably tied back to the web of social forces that binds us all – not least because of the demands that both the market and political forces exert on creatives.

As every professional writer knows, the publishing industry can be an extremely cutthroat environment. Competition is fierce and nepotism is rife. The fruits of mainstream success are reserved for a rarefied “chosen few” – yet more mainstream success one acquires, the more external pressure one faces to conform to narratives that benefit (or at least do not challenge) the powerful and privileged. The owners of the huge corporations that dominate every level of the publishing sector, as well as the funders of major awards, festivals, and granting organizations, are frequently involved in business and political ventures that are directly related to political violence, including war crimes and genocide.

In Canada, where I live, a major example is the Giller Prize, which is one of the country’s largest and most prestigious literary prizes. The award comes with $100,000 for the winning author, a truly life-changing amount of money for the majority of professional creatives.

Since 2023, the Giller Prize has been protested by many in the Canadian literary scene, given its sponsorship by organizations with significant investments in Israeli military violence in Palestine and beyond, including the Prize’s largest funder, Scotiabank. This year, many Giller Prize nominees withdrew themselves from consideration, and several past winners also spoke out against complicity in genocide. I am grateful for the organizing labour and the courage of such colleagues in the field. It is to be hoped that many more writers – particularly those with prominent, well-established careers and rafts of prizes to their names – will follow suit with similar actions.

For as long as I can remember, the literary world has often wrapped itself in an aura of moral righteousness. A favoured notion of bourgeois liberalism is that so-called “high” literature is inherently good and that famous literary authors are therefore automatically on “the right side of history.”

Indeed, one could perhaps be forgiven the confusion, because many famous contemporary authors have made their careers by writing beautiful books on complex moral themes, and today, many famous authors seem intent on defending oppression and injustice with beautiful words. I am reminded here of the words of author Janet Fitch who writers in her novel White Oleander that “just because a poet said something didn’t mean it was true, only that it sounded good.” This points to an essential question not only for writers, but for readers in a world drowning in propaganda: What is the difference between writing that sounds good and writing that is true?

I am coming to believe that a writer owes their readers truth: Not “the” truth, not an essential truth or a dominating truth meant to suppress all other ideas, because of course this is how propaganda is born. What I mean is that a writer owes their reader the truth of the writer’s vulnerability, our struggle rather than false certainty, our earnest attempts to make sense of a senseless world. This begins with being clear about the facts, clear about ourselves, writing towards clarity rather than obfuscation. We owe this to readers, and to other writers, we owe it to ourselves, to the living and to the dead.

There is already too much language in the world that is specifically intended to hide the truth – to justify murder and exploitation, to justify the unjustifiable. A writer’s responsibility is to leave more truth in the world, not less. Whatever complexities exist in the world, there are indeed some fundamental truths, and one of them is that ethnic cleansing and genocide are wrong, no matter what fears or past traumas drive them.

When I was growing up, adults would often observe me writing and say, “The pen is mightier than the sword.” It was both an encouragement and a condescension. Writers are always being patted on the head and told that our work is Inspiring and Very Important, and perhaps to console ourselves, we often pat ourselves on the back and say the same. Yet too frequently, when there is something truly meaningful to be said, writers tremble and censorship abounds.

I am grateful for courageous colleagues and mentors who speak the truth as they know it. The pen is only as mighty as the poet’s heart is brave. It is hard to be brave as a writer. We are fragile creatures in a frightening ecosystem, and many of us never asked to carry the weight of truth telling in a world that hates truth. Yet we do carry that weight. The best we can hope for is that our work might spark a small light, somewhere out there, in someone who needs it.

Free Palestine.