Homeland Security Defends Its Stance: Keeping America Safe from Poetry

The Washington Post bears additional news about the fate of British-Jordanian poet Amjad Nasser who Homeland Security barred from entering the United States last month. As WP writes:

“Poetry can be dangerous,” Rumi said, and U.S. Homeland Security isn’t taking any chances.

The Jordanian-British poet Amjad Nasser had been invited to speak at New York University this fall, but on Sept. 27, he was questioned for two hours at London’s Heathrow airport and then prevented from flying to the United States.

PEN American Center in New York and Split This Rock in Washington have issued a public letter to Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson calling this situation an “outrageous violation of Mr. Nasser’s right to travel and of Americans’ right to meet and share ideas with our sisters and brothers from around the world.”

Nasser’s denial of entry was particularly disappointing to Sinan Antoon, the NYU professor who had invited him to deliver the inaugural address at the Gallatin Global Writers series. “I started reading his poetry 15 years ago,” Antoon said. “He was, back then, and still is, at the forefront of the Arabic prose poem. I met him in London in 2005 and then again at the Ledbury Poetry Festival in England in 2009 and have corresponded occasionally with him, especially since he was the culture editor for a major London-based newspaper where I published some of my own poems.”

Antoon said the notion that Nasser might pose a threat to the United States is “ridiculous — unless poetry poses a threat to U.S. interests. He is an internationally recognized poet and a highly respected cultural figure in the Arab world.” [...]

More at Washington Post.