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1/ Seeing as the Guardian's run a goddamn obituary of Peter Sutcliffe, I'm sharing this Blake Morrison poem about the demonisation of women & how we can't underplay misogyny's role in the killings.
As Sutcliffe said, "I were just cleaning up streets".
As Sutcliffe said, "I were just cleaning up streets".
2/ Morrison connects the Pendle witch trials to Sutcliffe's killings: both were linked to misogyny & in both cases women were seen as 'polluting' the area simply by being themselves.
3/ So is it ethical for poets to write about real life violence? There are questions around exploitation here. How can writers deal with this subject sensitively, & non gratuitously? Especially when the violence was committed in recent memory?
4/ We look to the past in order to learn from it so those bad things can never happen again. But look back to the persecution of witches in the 17th century & we find parallels today in the way society fears certain minorities (and I'd add, women).
5/ You can read the full version of the poem here: https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v07/n12/blake-morrison/the-ballad-of-the-yorkshire-ripper
