I was an imprisoned Canadian poet for one day in 1975

 

NOVEMBER 2023 NEWSLETTER
TODAY IS DAY OF THE IMPRISONED WRITER

 

  

Every year, on November 15, PEN calls for urgent international action to protect writers and journalists across the globe, who increasingly find themselves targeted for peaceful dissent.

This year, PEN calls for urgent international action on behalf of María Cristina Garrido Rodríguez, Go Sherab Gyatso, Iryna Danylovych, and Soulaiman Raissouni.

Your voice matters. Take action:
Send a letter of solidarity to the imprisoned writer
Appeal to their governments and embassies
Post with #ImprisonedWriter on social media
Please take action with us between November 15 and 22.

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Above is from the PEN Canada (Poets, Essayists, Novelists) newsletter yesterday. I'm a member, but my one day of imprisonment in a Canadian jail was luckily more comedy than the usual tragedy experienced by imprisoned writers.  I believe I was the first person arrested under the then new Canadian"hate laws". Of course wearing a bright yellow tee shirt emblazoned YANKEE GO HOME was a politikal act, not a hate crime. The nationalist political group The Canadian Liberation Movement successfully  fought my  charges all the way to the Supreme Court of Ontario. The judge even reprimanded the testifying officer that he was close to giving false testimony. Here's the poem:

Dominion Day in Jail

(Celebration 1975)


I spent last Dominion Day in jail
in a cold cell
on a steel bench -
cold, sleepless angry and proud
tho almost wanting to feel foolish.

Fed a cheeseburger and a coffee in 24 hours
fingerprinted
stripped of my shirt
frogmarched - mugshot
insulted.

All of this for the patriotic crime
of daring to say Yankee Go Home!
to theYankee Shriners
parading through downtown Toronto.
They thought it was the 4th of July (Canada Division)

Cold, sleepless hungry angry
              Proud
that I was cold, sleepless hungry angry
and not enjoying theJuly sun
lounging on the green grass in Queen's Park
or lining the parade route for the Shriners.
This growing pride made my solitary jail cell
a celebration of Dominion Day.


from my self-published chapbook Dominion Day in Jail
Unfinished Monument Press,  Toronto, 1975
printing by Muskox Press