Today’s poem is chosen and introduced by Teacher of English, Head of EPQ and Oxbridge Co-ordinator, Ms Geussens.
Today’s poem for the day is called ‘(Riot Police)’, and I’m sure you can imagine why. There is a strangeness when we contrast the months we have spent quietly at home, and the current events around the world, in which people in the US, as well as in Hong Kong and nearer to home, are clashing with the riot police the poem is named after. Poetry offers us one way of accessing life outside of our own experience, and this is a very good example.
Perhaps there is something to be said, first, about whether poetry should be political. Should poetry stay in its lane, and offer us nothing but solace in difficult times? Is there something selfish in indulging in the beauty of language, when there are problems to be fixed? On the other hand: is there such a thing as a poem that does not engage with the current events of the world, even if presenting us with an entirely unworldly fantasy?
What I find striking about this poem is the way that it empathises with the faceless police officer, hidden behind the ‘full face visor’. It would be so easy to see someone like this either as a faceless enemy – or, from another perspective, a masked superhero. Instead, Shin imagines the man’s feelings: how he feels that the men alongside him are his ‘brothers’, for example. At the same time, she pulls no punches and describes his ‘maw snapping pencils’ – the word ‘maw’ suggesting a predator, and the pencils, of course, being rather precious to a poet. She seems to laugh at him when she calls him a ‘Baby gladiator’ and an ‘Insect lord’.
The poem is a detailed look at a small moment, which perhaps took only seconds. Shin lives in Chicago, and the poem is clearly based on a real event. The lack of enjambment and fragmentary sentences makes it feel like prose, almost like something you’d jot down in your diary immediately afterwards. At the same time, Shin explores the full range of police brutality and human interconnectedness.
I have to admit, my own views are clear: poetry allows us to look closely, think deeply, speak honestly, and play with different perspectives even as we stay true to ourselves, and that’s why we need it.
(Riot Police)
This is you—Titanus giganteus, your maw snapping pencils in half and cutting through human flesh. My encyclopedia chokes on your bulk. My camera, timid, afraid to look, as if you’re naked—not one adult male, but millions.
Few garments sound as fine as flak jacket, the best of the tagmata the thorax, more prime than brains as the body can keep mating, cracking its margins. Your shield like a wing, protects your bulletproof heart from the wind, your right arm black in the cloth of your brothers. Full face visor. Baby gladiator.
Beyond the screen, memorized—jawbone like a scandal reflecting all the thieves and beggars. Insect lord, insect mind. This is my fear. You look like my brother, my son. You could kill me with your looks.
