Darkness Is Where The Stars Are-Blasphemy

Poetry launch cancelled after Christian protest
13 Nov 08, 10:04 AM
The launch of a new book of poems in the Waterstone's bookstore in Cardiff has been cancelled because a conservative Christian campaign group called on the chain to removes copies of the book from its stores. Darkness Is Where The Stars Are by Patrick Jones was to be launched at 7.30 p.m. yesterday, but Patrick Jones says the event was cancelled because of a 'threats of disruption' to the store.

Christian Voice's leader Stephen Green led an e-mail campaign against the book, and encouraged Waterstones to cancel the launch, because he regards some of the poems within the collection as 'obscene and blasphemous'.

Even though the event had been cancelled, Patrick Jones went to the Waterstones bookstore at The Hayes in Cardiff and signed copies of his book in the street. Mr Jones is plainly a poet who addresses political and religious themes in his work. In this collection, some poems explore the portrayal of women and some deal with the relationship between Jesus and Mary Magdalene. He uses language that is, at times, raw. He would not be the first poet to address these themes or to use raw language.

As one might expect, Christian Voice have now given Patrick Jones a much larger audience than he might previously have expected for his book. We'll see how this story pans out over the next few days, but I expect that the controversy provoked by the cancellation of this book launch will increase sales and name recognition for this poet.

Speaking of which, here's his bio:

Patrick is a poet, playwright, human rights activist and filmmaker. His work includes the poetry collections The Guerilla tapestry and Fuse, the CD of spoken word and music Commemoration and Amnesia and the plays Everything Must Go, Unprotected Sex, The War is Dead long live the war and Sing to Me. He has also directed short films and videos for the bands The Manic Street Preachers and Lethargy. Patrick is also committed to taking words to the whole of the community and has developed writing groups for young people in Wales and beyond, developed and co-ordinated writing and drama workshops for people of all ages and from a mixed background, attended many different organisations from community groups to universities to speak about writing and give readings of work. Set-up various writing projects for people with specific needs, for example hospice patients, school non-attendees, mental health patients and most recently the young homeless.He has worked with various communty based projects with NCH, The Welsh National Opera, St. David's Foundation Hospice Care and The Dyn Project (advocacy for men who have experienced domestic violence) and The Prison Service.

William Crawley
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/ni/2008/11/poetry_launch_cancelled_after.html