The Poetics of Social (In)Justice

The pen is only mightier than the sword if we assert our right to freely wield it

The world of Australian poetry has been characterized as “a knife fight in a phone booth”—something I was blissfully unaware of when I bounded like an enthusiastic Labrador into the scene ten years ago. At the time, I was thrilled to join a pack of like minded creatives who I assumed were as committed to the free exchange of ideas and integrity of artistic expression as I was. But the upheavals of 2020 saw me undergo a cancellation that had me licking my wounds and opening my eyes to a new style of warfare in the literary world—one in which artists and activists clash online in the name of social justice.

In 2015, I assumed the role of managing editor of the creative arts journal Verity La. I’d let my writing “go” while raising three kids, but now that the youngest was off to school, I was keen to rekindle my passion.

Over the next five years, I volunteered an average of twenty hours a week to run the journal and gradually assembled a dream-team of other editors to help it grow. Of the initiatives we founded, closest to my heart were our specialized publishing streams—Discoursing Diaspora, Disrupt, Black Cockatoo and Clozapine Clinic—projects run by and for traditionally marginalized writers. By 2020, we were publishing 100 new pieces a year, had established a small print publishing house, and were managing to pay our writers through a combination of grants, subscriptions, book sales, and fundraising. Verity La, “the little journal that could,” had finally found her feet; what I didn’t foresee was how she would soon have them swept out from under her.

On May 18, 2024, we published a story called “About Lin” by poet and academic Stuart Cooke. It was a challenging piece exploring the power imbalance in a sexual relationship between a white Australian male and local woman in the Philippines.

For a month, the story sat on the website without comment.

Then, on June 13, a poetry colleague named Eileen Chong texted me to say that “when it came out, I read it, and I thought it was racist, sexist and just not very good.”

Ok, I thought, that’s important to know. My colleague was on the journal’s advisory board, so her opinion was one I sought and respected. But when she went on to add, “I would like to step away from the board,” I was unsure how to respond.

In the nearly four weeks since “About Lin” was published, my colleague and I had chatted frequently, and I’d happily administered an arts grant through Verity La for her as a favor. I was confused by her sudden change of heart toward the journal, and by her decision to resign via text without discussion. When I replied that her stance “felt a bit harsh” and asked if we could talk later, things went downhill quickly:

…what’s harsh is seeing VL publish something that is so racist and sexist in today’s world … I don’t expect you to take anything down … If you and the editors can’t see it, then it’s really got nothing more to do with me and I won’t say anything to you again.

When my colleague emailed her resignation the next day, I let her know that I valued her opinion and urged her to stay on.

If you have the time to let me know your thoughts and concerns about this in more detail, I would really appreciate it. I'm completely open to having a blind spot in this regard and to doing better next time … Thanks for your work mediating in this area … I appreciate it and think it's important work, which I hope you will continue to do :-)

To my dismay, she refused, saying the piece’s publication had led her to feel “unsafe as a woman and writer of colour” and that “this is the last you will hear from me on this.”

Sadly, it wasn’t.

On June 15, I received a call warning me that writers and editors from Verity La and the broader writing community were being informed that I had dismissed my colleague’s concerns. My heart sank—the knives were out.

Still, my job was to come to a balanced decision on “About Lin.” I’d already alerted the Verity La board and editors to my colleague’s complaint, and now set about liaising with peer reviewers and industry professionals to get a broad range of feedback on the story. Had we been wrong to publish it? I was open to taking it down, but since we’d only had one complaint, the board and the author of the piece opted to keep it online prefaced by a trigger warning, and statements explaining that we did so in the spirit of encouraging important conversations around themes of power, privilege, race, sexism and literary representation.

In retrospect, we may not have got it right, but I can say with my hand on my heart that it certainly wasn’t from lack of caring or trying.

What happened next felt like an ambush.

On June 23, immediately after I’d alerted my colleague to the journal’s decision regarding “About Lin,” two editors (poets!) dropped into the staff email chain to resign in protest shortly before publicizing their stance on Facebook.

The stage was set, the community primed for outrage.

On June 25, I woke to an email from a group of “Filipinx”-Australian writers demanding we remove the story. Pulling the piece based on just one complaint had felt rash, but now taking it down seemed like the wise thing to do. I contacted the board and the author, and by the end of the day, the piece was removed. Private and public apologies were issued.

Apologies used to be more straightforward affairs, given and taken in the spirit of human fallibility. Now, at least on social media, they’re linguistic minefields.

First, we apologized via email to the “Filipinx” writers and offered, by way of reparations, to commission five Filipina women to write stories of self-representation. They rejected my offer, tweeting, “We no longer wish to have our work on your rotten, white supremacist platform.”

Next, we apologized on social media. When that apology was found wanting, we issued a self-damning statement on our website announcing we would be taking a break from publishing to review our processes. Still, the critiques flowed.

Panicking, I blocked some of the more vocal accounts on Twitter, only to be accused of “silencing the voices of women of colour.” This wasn’t my intention, so I quickly unblocked them and apologized again. Privately, I also reached out via a mediator to the “Filipinx” writing community—but nobody wished to talk to me; everyone felt “unsafe.”

Simultaneously, I was fielding distressed calls from Verity La editors and board members who were being pressured to resign. One requested her profile be removed from our website after receiving more than fifty haranguing messages in a single weekend. Another landed in hospital with a severe stress-induced migraine, and yet another reluctantly resigned for fear of losing his academic placement since he was the sole breadwinner for his family. Many of these volunteers hailed from the very marginalized communities those bullying them claimed to care about. I took everyone’s names off the website.

As days turned to weeks, my former colleague tweeted indefatigably (“They are pretending I don’t exist or matter. Oh wait … They did that when I first spoke up. They silenced me, then erased me; I was gaslighted and ignored; @seminaramichele editor @verityla, you know what you did”). These Tweets were even published as an article in the literary journal Meanjin, with my colleague erroneously claiming that she “tried for weeks through private emails” to get me to see that “About Lin” was problematic and had “been punished” and made to “feel guilty for speaking up.”

They say the average social media pile-on lasts two weeks. Mine raged on for months and its digital and psychological footprints endure. Every night at 3 am, I would wake in panic, pervaded by an overwhelming sense of shame. Psychologists agree that nothing pains the human psyche as much as being shunned, and in the modern-day arena of social media, weaponized shame can be lethal.

Email after email flooded in: other editors gleefully berating me, writers withdrawing their work from the journal, writers’ festivals un-inviting me as a speaker, literary organisations rescinding invitations to teach or judge prizes, and—worst of all—my publisher saying that since my former colleague had “made a point” of emailing to express her “concerns over my recent behaviour,” they were postponing the impending publication of my book. I was gutted.

I hit rock bottom on August 18 when an open letter was circulated on social media demanding the journal’s funding body, Create NSW, withdraw their support for the “racist, white supremacist organisation Verity La.” Without providing proof, it elaborated on “the behaviour of its managing editor” which had been “nothing but spiteful … including malicious, racist and sexist remarks … with online abuse levelled at writers of colour.” Surely, I thought, those who’d happily worked with me just weeks before would not believe it? But I was missing the point: I had been tarred and feathered. Whoever dared stand with me would be too.

Unsurprisingly, few did.

Curled in a fetal position in bed that night reading the growing list of 250 signees—many of them colleagues and “friends”—I finally surrendered and decided to close the journal.

Then something unexpected happened: the open letter disappeared offline. Had someone been advised to take it down? Perhaps there was some support out there, some way forward? In dribs and drabs, it came. An article appeared in The Australian, and another in The Spectator. The artistic director of the Canberra Writers Festival, Jeanne Ryckmans, contacted me after coming under fire on Twitter from some poets for her festival’s alleged “lack of diversity.” My former colleague had called her “a right-wing, shit … who won’t engage with their literary community” and it was falsely claimed that she was part of an “all-white board” (Ryckmans is Eurasian).

On hearing my story, Ryckmans courageously stuck her head above the parapet, tweeting, “Bravo, Verity La. Happy to know you’re back,” and cited a quote from her late father, renowned writer and Sinologist Simon Leys, who’d bravely called out the brutality of the Chinese Communist Party at a time when others were afraid to do so. We’ve since become firm friends.

Four years on, and I’ve cautiously begun to rebuild Verity La. However, while the tide may be turning against the excesses of “woke,” the journal’s chances of receiving support from the overwhelmingly left-leaning writing community or the country’s ideologically captured literary funding bodies are slim. My former colleague, conversely, has since been awarded two arts grants totaling $70,000 to write a “book length poem.” It seems the business of cancellation pays off.

Rebuilding myself and my career is another kind of work in progress. My infamy still precedes me and if I do manage to secure a rare casual job in the arts, my detractors inevitably resurface to lobby employers and other writers against working with me. That this continues is frustrating, amusing, and dispiriting.

Still, I've drawn valuable lessons from the experience. My cancellation helped me clarify my values and forced me to dig deep to find the courage to act in alignment with them. It revealed my strengths and weaknesses and taught me who—and what—are important. It made me less afraid of being judged and disliked. And it opened my eyes to the way groupthink and authoritarianism on the far-left are corroding Western culture.

At a time when expressing dissenting ideas is verboten and creative sovereignty is threatened, it feels like a strength to think critically and write freely. Yet I worry how other artists—and art—will fare when so many feel compelled to curtail their work and speech for fear of losing favor or attracting censure.

The word poet comes from the Greek poietes, meaning “to make.” Rather than capitulate to those who would tell us what to think and what to make, I believe writers must dare advocate for the literary work and community they wish to create. The pen is only mightier than the sword if we assert our right to freely wield it.

This is an essay for our new series, “Make Them Hear You: Stories from FAIR Artists.” Learn more about the series and contribute here.

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