Poets Read for Pussy Riot (Dublin)
Poets in Dublin come together to mark the nine-month anniversary of Pussy Riot’s performance in a Moscow Cathedral by reading from their work and from Catechism: Poems for Pussy Riot , English PEN's anthology for the band. On 21 February, members of Russian punk collective Pussy Riot staged a protest in Moscow’s Cathedral of Christ the Saviour, denouncing the Russian Orthodox Church’s support for President Vladimir Putin. Three members of the collective, Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, Maria Alyokhina and Yekaterina Samutsevich, were arrested and held in custody until August when they were each sentenced to two years in prison on charges of ‘hooliganism motivated by religious hatred’. At their appeal hearing in October, the two-year jail term of Samutsevich was suspended, but the sentences against Tolokonnikova and Alyokhina were upheld. They have since been separated and transferred to notorious prison colonies, far from Moscow and their young children. In order to raise and maintain