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The politics of poetry

A poem was removed from Pakistani textbooks after it was found to contain what appears to be a blatant endorsement of the Bush Administration, reports Alex Kumi of The Guardian. The poem was published in a collection of writing intended for school-aged youths called A Textbook for English, following the Pakistani government’s decision to deregulate the publication of textbooks. Written by an anonymous author and entitled “The Leader,” it is both a 20-line enumeration of qualities that make a great leader and an acrostic that spells, with the first letters of each line, “President George W Bush.”

Reports Kumi, “The revelation is likely to embarrass Pakistan’s president Pervez Musharraf, who has been criticised at home for taking what has been perceived to be a pro-American stance in supporting the Bush administration’s so-called war on terror…. An investigation has been launched to find out how the work was not spotted by the committees which censor the content of textbooks.”

Related links:
Click here for the full story and excerpts of the poem, as published in The Guardian
Click here for the full poem, complete with study notes

By

December 6th, 2005

12:00 am

Category: Industry news

Tagged with: Politics