Poetry as protest: British poet Alice Oswald on her arrest, and on learning from plants

Q. When you were protesting in support of Palestine Action – a UK-based direct-action group that was declared a terrorist organisation in the UK in 2025 – did you expect to be arrested?

Alice Oswald: Yes, I very much expected it. I have been going on these marches for the last two years… I felt I needed to do something different when a law was passed making it illegal even to protest in support of Palestine Action.

When the government starts making laws that break down democracy, you really do have to respond. I remember being in my garden in Devon and thinking: at the very worst, this might mean prison for 14 years. I was horrified. It would certainly mean I couldn’t travel to America, and I do a lot of work there. It would also be quite humiliating. A lot of people I know don’t support Palestine Action, so there would be social backlash. I thought about it hard, and I kept coming back to the fact that if I didn’t do it, my children would inherit a democracy that had stopped working. I do not want that.

At first my husband tried to persuade me not to do it, but I said, “I’m really sorry, I’ve made this decision.” He then became very supportive. I also noticed that everybody was telling me not to do it, so I stopped talking about it and just went and did it.

Alice Oswald was arrested while protesting in support of Palestine Action a direct-action group that was declared a terrorist organisation in the UK. (Courtesy: X@Outspoken_Press) 

I was arrested under Section 12, which is very serious—it carries a 14-year sentence. The officer looking at the charge kept saying, “Are you sure you mean Section 12?” She kept being told, “Yes, Section 12.” But then they actually wrote 13 on my document. So the officers didn’t really know what they were doing.

When I talked to them in the police van, they said, “This is our job. We cannot question it.” But I could see that it mattered to them.

The second time I was arrested, I had an incredibly humane police officer. He said he did not think the law was going to stick. He thought the government had perhaps made a mistake and would have to find a way out of it.

I don’t know what will happen. It seems that the more the British government realises how ridiculous this is, the harder they’re going to push it. But I think there may come a point where they realise they can’t get away with it.

Q. At what point does the poet who usually interprets the world decide to physically intercede?

Alice Oswald: For me, it was because at the heart of the poetry I am interested in there is a metaphysical idea of democracy. By democracy, I do not mean politics in a narrow sense. I mean that in my poems I try to give everything a voice, from the human to the tree to the insect.

My deepest principle in a poem is listening and transmitting the voices of marginal characters. When that fundamental principle is overstepped by the Prime Minister of my country, I can’t help acting. It seems to threaten poetry itself.

Q. You have taught poetry to children in Palestine when it was under attack. What did poetry mean in the middle of devastation? Can you tell us any anecdote?

Alice Oswald: It is deeply, deeply shocking. There is a 13-year-old girl I’ve been teaching who is an extraordinarily good poet. Sometimes the poems she gives me seem almost too good, there are so many images. I would say, “What is it you are really trying to say here?”

In one video-conferencing session, she said she did not want to talk about what the poem was really about. I kept pressing her, and she told me that she is always writing about the moment she heard an explosion at night. She came out of her room, it was dark… She was 13. I think it was a neighbour’s child who was eight or nine… I asked her whether we could create a poem that might at least carry this image for her, since she did not want to write the image itself. She said, “No. As Muslims, we can’t really ask for help with what we’re going through. We just have to suffer.” That stayed with me. Not only that a 13-year-old had witnessed something I do not think I would cope with, but that she was determined to carry it without help, from God, from poetry, from anything.

She was also caring for her family. Her mother has multiple sclerosis and they cannot get the medication. Her sister is ill. She is 13 and running the household. Every student I had had something equivalent to that. Often they were too hungry to attend lessons. Whatever we are told about food getting in, it was not getting in. They were starving and exhausted.

At the same time, working with them gave me hope because of the extraordinary human capacity to recover and to write astonishing poetry. But I witnessed things so disturbing that I will never forget them. And I’m not going to be told by our Prime Minister what is happening there, because I know.

Q. You have written about The Odyssey and The Iliad, and about how epics help us understand kings. Is there an anecdote from either that feels parallel to the present moment?

Alice Oswald: The most beautiful scene in The Iliad is when Priam, Hector’s father, comes to Achilles. They are on opposite sides, but Priam thinks he sees his son, and Achilles thinks he sees his father. There is a sudden connection, and the poem softens. But the passage I wish people would remember is in Book Nine, about the figures called the Lítai, the spirits of prayer. They are described as old, crippled, squinting women who remind people about forgiveness.

This passage is rarely mentioned, but it is at the heart of The Iliad. I believe these figures are memories of real women who would come after conflict and try to bring peace. Homer says that if you refuse apology and forgiveness, things will get worse and worse. That is where we are now, in what they call ate, the spirit of madness. If you refuse to make terms, violence escalates. I think people should be reading that passage now and saying: we have to forgive, and we have to make peace.

Q. Have you had a chance to read the Indian epics?

Alice Oswald: Oh my God—you have the best epics. They are wonderful and very beautiful. The scene with Arjuna, and that entire speech, is incredibly important. We have a lot to learn from it.

Q. This year, there seems to be a revival of the classics. Christopher Nolan is coming out with The Odyssey, and just two days ago, we heard a new translation by Stephen Fry being discussed. Why do you think we are seeing such a cultural return right now?

Alice Oswald. I do think those poems are like huge old oak trees. They are steadfast and reliable, but they are also fresh. They are always new. I think that’s because of the way they’re made. They are oral poems, and there’s something in them that continually updates itself. I’m wary, though, of people becoming too instrumental about them. Poetry works in a very mysterious way. Once you put it on a school syllabus and tell people, “Read this and you will learn A, B, and C,” you destroy the poem. A poem is like a living being. It’s mysterious. I hope these poems don’t become boxed in or overused as tools, because it’s important that we don’t fully understand why they’re important. They’re just huge.

Q. What are you reading at the moment?

Alice Oswald: I want to read Rana Dasgupta’s After Nations. The breakdown of nations feels like what we’re living through, and everything has to change. There is a role for poetry and thinkers in imagining what comes next, we need a new moral basis. I have been reading Lal Ded, the Kashmiri poet. I’ve also just read Pankaj Mishra’s From the Ruins of Empire. It’s devastating and brilliant. Some of what it records, especially about British imperial behaviour, is deeply shameful. We have a very shameful history.

Q. One final question. The younger generation has inherited war, climate crisis, and constant exposure to all of it through social media. What is your message to them?

Alice Oswald: I think they are lucky that it is an emergency, because they will have to make a new system in a new world. If I were to focus on one thing, it would be gardens. Gardening teaches you about systems of growth and sustainability. You can’t get away without attention to detail, and you learn a different kind of intelligence from plants. So I would say: live life energetically. You need to remake the world, and you must start now. And perhaps you could take some instruction from plants.