Literary freedom is in the gutter

In the Scottish literary world I dimly remember once existing, someone publishing a 25-year retrospective poetry collection, with top publisher Bloodaxe no less, would have been an unalloyed cause for celebration.

So it should have been for poet and novelist Polly Clark, whose collection Afterlife launched last month. Ever since publishing her first collection Kiss (2000) which won an Eric Gregory award, Clark has enjoyed an award-winning, successful career across both poetry and prose. 

She also happens to hold gender-critical views, which she made public two years ago. Since then, she occasionally shares her thoughts on women’s rights and reality via her popular Substack and X account. 

Unfortunately, in the Scottish literary world that has emerged throughout the fractious 2010s and 20s, holding such views is liable to have you treated with the vitriol formerly reserved for cat murderers.

It shouldn’t, of course. While treated as atrocious, “gender critical” simply means acknowledging that sex is real and matters rather a lot sometimes.

As a writer with identical views, I know the only thing for it is to act, as far as possible, as if we still live in a sane world where objective truths like these can be uttered freely. 

There’s little point being a writer of any kind if you don’t value freedom — that’s the pay-off for what is otherwise a pretty precarious existence financially.

Unfortunately, creative writers and poets nowadays operate in a delicate literary ecology of distinctly unfree-thinking entities. 

From fearful agents to risk-averse publishers; awards and fellowships prioritising non-artistic principles; to national arts funders and book festivals showing blatant bias in who they allow a platform, the last decade in particular has been hellish to navigate.

And so, to the craven behaviour of Gutter, who are funded by Creative Scotland to self-identify as “Scotland’s leading literary magazine.”

A few days before publication of Afterlife, they made it their Book of the Month, alongside publishing a stunning review. 

The reviewer, poet Iona Lee, praised it as “a fine collection: funny, feminine, and violent; confessional yet mysterious.” Within 48 hours, however, both the online review and Book of the Month accolade disappeared from Gutter’s website.

The reason given, provided in writing to Clark’s publisher, was: “a reader drew our attention to social media posts by Polly Clark that they considered to be offensive.”

In the eyes of the zealous, fearful, or fashionably uninformed people who tend to be in charge of Creative Scotland-funded literary organisations, it doesn’t take much to be labelled “anti-trans” or “unsafe”. 

But note the scant details. What specifically was wrong with Clark’s posts? And who was this apparently sole complainant, granted the power to sully the work of a talented writer? 

It can be difficult to explain how saddening it is to have creative work you’ve laboured over — in Clark’s case for 25 years — treated with such contempt. It’s also difficult to neatly sum up the fullness of what I’ve come to call a “hounding” in the arts over this issue.

It’s a layered process: sometimes, there will be blatant incidents of discrimination, like Gutter’s erasure of a positive review. But, along with provable examples like Open Letters, venue harassment, or emails complaining to publishers or artistic collaborators, there’s unseen cancellation; the invites that simply don’t come, the double-standards applied that you cannot prove.

Having swum these murky waters for nearly seven years myself, I know it’s akin to the difference between a long slow death and having your head cut off. It doesn’t really stop; there’s no final chapter. There’s also little you can do about it, but stubbornly attempt to keep writing through it, even as the blows keep coming.

Clark put in a Subject Access Request to discover precisely what Gutter felt justified her treatment. The result is astonishing.

A barely literate complaint, clearly sent via social media, claimed it was “harmful” for Gutter to praise the work of “someone who has demonstrated TERF views and support for other out right (sic) TERFS”. This zealous reader provided screenshots they felt merited their complaint.

Nothing shows Clark saying anything “harmful”, which is subjective anyway. Included was a retweet of me, which read:

There’s not a woman on earth born before 2002 or thereabouts who thought her life would be eaten up by having to argue men aren’t women and being punished for saying so. It is the most insane thing that has ever happened to a lot of us. That mustn’t ever be downplayed.

The irony bypass of including this as a reason to punish yet another woman aside, it’s clear this person must be someone Gutter either fears or feels must be taken seriously. Attempts to discover their identity have proven fruitless, and neither reviewer Iona Lee nor Gutter’s editorial board have responded to repeated requests for comment by journalists.

There is absolutely no legal remedy for Polly Clark to take. Creative Scotland is missing in action; Gutter’s funding remains in place. Meanwhile, Scotland’s toothless literary class continue their near silence.

“Censorship of this kind remains, for now, a moral and cultural offence rather than a legal one,” Clark said in a statement released on Monday. “Of course, that makes it no less real.”

Polly Clark will continue writing her way through this. And, no doubt, it won’t be the only discrimination she will face. As the rest of the world starts to return to sanity, Scotland’s literary culture remains censorious, unlawful, and handsomely funded to be so.

I’m grateful to have once experienced a literary culture that wasn’t like this. It would be nice to see a better one again. I fear that without serious effort, however, it will stay in the gutter the censors and hounders seem to prefer.