The size of a song: Pussy Riot and the (people) power of poetry

Every time you say noto something that's wronga crack the size of a hair &a single note of that songinserts itself in the stone

the meaning of strong

it might take a short timeit might take long

nonono

listen, millions of ussinging along.

Ali Smith, 'Song,' Catechism: Poems for Pussy Riot

Pussy Riot's Punk Prayer, also known as 'Virgin Mary, Chase Out Putin', lasted for less than two minutes, based on the YouTube video that circulated their performance of 21 February 2012 in Moscow's Cathedral of Christ the Saviour to over 1.5 million viewers. Heard around the world, it was a short, sharp shock that has since extended into a series of court cases that have highlighted and made evident the repressive force of the Kremlin under Vladimir Putin and Dmitri Medvedev. In his introduction to Catechism: Poems for Pussy Riot, the anthology I co-edited with fellow poets Mark Burnhope and Sarah Crewe for English PEN, poet and translator George Szirtes writes that the 'charge of "hooliganism" [brought against the three members of Pussy Riot who were arrested] is rather like the one of "parasitism" that was directed at the [to-be-]Nobel Prize-winning poet, Josef Brodsky in 1964. It is broadly seen as a charge of convenience. In that sense Pussy Riot has grown from a minor nuisance to a global cause'.

As the cause has grown, it has attracted attention and support from leading musicians including Patti Smith, Kathleen Hanna, Yoko Ono and Madonna, who was censured as a 'slut' for her supportive declaration in a Moscow concert. Pussy Riot's musical performance is only one aspect of the activist performance strategy of Voina, the larger group to which they belong, but - with its visual clarity, punk attitude, and lyrical power - it is the action that drew both the coercive attention of the government and subsequently the supportive attention of the international community. This essay considers the power of a song - 'the meaning of strong', in Ali Smith's words - in generating both censorship and solidarity, and how the amplification of social media is recharging the power of protest in words and music.

'Hooliganism', like 'parasitism', was a charge that sought to deny the creative conception and intention of Pussy Riot's performance. Maria Alyokhina concluded her 8 August testimony at the Khamovnichesky Court, during the band's trial, by recognising and excoriating the prosecution's intention in denying the band's artistry, depriving it of articulacy and affect, a move the prosecution extended in refusing to admit the band's apologies for causing offence:

I am extremely angered by the phrase 'so-called' which the State Prosecutor uses to refer to contemporary art. I would like to draw attention to the fact that during the trial of Brodsky exactly the same phrase was used. His poems were referred to as 'so-called poetry', and the witnesses hadn't even read them. Just as a number of our witnesses had not actually seen what had happened.

Our apologies were clearly also thought of by the collective prosecution as 'so-called'. And that is insulting, because they were truthful. You haven't yet understood, or perhaps it is your slyness which makes you refer to our apologies as insincere. I don't know what you would need to hear to convince you.

And if that's how it is, then for me at least this trial is just a 'so-called' trial. I am not afraid of you. I am not afraid of you and I am not afraid of the thinly veneered deceit of your verdict at this 'so-called' trial. My truth lives with me. I believe that honesty, free-speaking and the thirst for truth will make us all a little freer. We will see this come to pass.¹

Alyokhina, who has begun a hunger strike as I write this, after being refused attendance at her own parole hearing, refuses the word 'trial' for the proceedings in which she is...