ABSTRACT
In this chapter, in 2007, the author helped to publish a small collection of poems written by 17 Guantanamo detainees. All of the men whose work appeared in Poems from Guantánamo:The Detainees Speak wrote their poems "inside the wire," that is, while they were imprisoned as suspected enemy combatants by the US military. Several, including a Yemeni named Adnan Latif, were clients whom the author was representing in habeas corpus litigation in federal court. The inhumane treatment meted out to Adnan and many of the other poets was a sadly predictable consequence of attempts to operate a prison above the law. Indeed, when Poems from Guantanamo first saw print, none of the prisoners had been charged or convicted of any crime. In his poem, Adnan wryly describes the soldiers who subject him to this torturous ritual as "poets" in their own right: They are artists of torture, They are artists of pain and fatigue, They are artists of insults and humiliation.
