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The Guardian, Terrible poet, laughable terrorist:

“Kamoze Ini’s Lyrical Gangster ditty kept popping in to my head last week every time Samina Malik, the “lyrical terrorist“, flashed by on a news bulletin. To be honest both the Lyrical Gangster and the lyrical terrorist have about as much to do with poetry or terrorism as each other - which is next to nothing.”

(…)

“What had she done? Well, she downloaded various documents from terrorist websites including weapons manuals and The Mujaheddin Poisoner’s Handbook, niftily designed with a skull and crossbones on the cover (I’m still not sure if this is a spoof). Compounding all of this, Malik went all Web 2.0 and posted poems - terrible, terrible poems - on various websites. That’s about the extent of her terrorist activity. But never fear. The judge and prosecutors went the extra mile to give her a notoriety that her very, very bad poetry and infantile fantasies about being a terrorist really don’t warrant.”

Clive James: “Akhmatova was the embodiment of the Russian liberal heritage that the authoritarians felt bound to go on threatening long after it had surrendered. As such, she was an inspiring symbol, but when a poet becomes better known than her poems, it usually means that she is being sacrificed, for extraneous reasons, on the altar of her own glory.”