Poems from Guantanamo
The Detainees Speak

Since 2002, at least 775 men have been held in the US detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. According to Department of Defense data, fewer than half of them are accused of committing any hostile act against the United States or its allies. This collection of poems aims to give voice to the men held at Guantanamo.

Since 2002, at least 775 men have been held in the U.S. detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. According to Department of Defense data, fewer than half of them are accused of committing any hostile act against the United States or its allies. In hundreds of cases, even the circumstances of their initial detainment are questionable. This collection gives voice to the men held at Guantanamo. Available only because of the tireless efforts of pro bono attorneys who submitted each line to Pentagon scrutiny, "Poems from Guantanamo" brings together twenty-two poems by seventeen detainees, most still at Guantanamo, in legal limbo. If, in the words of Audre Lorde, poetry "forms the quality of light within which we predicate our hopes and dreams toward survival and change," these verses - some originally written in toothpaste, others scratched onto foam drinking cups with pebbles and furtively handed to attorneys - are the most basic form of the art.