'On constantly mishearing ‘rioting’ as ‘writing’ on the BBC' <br /> <br /> <br />There has been writing for ten days now <br />unabated. People are anxious, fed up. <br />There is writing in Paris, in disaffected suburbs, <br />but also in small towns, and old ones like Lyon. <br />The writers have been burning cars; they’ve thrown <br />homemade Molotov cocktails at policemen. <br />Contrary to initial reports, the writers <br />belong to several communities: Algerian <br />and Caribbean, certainly, but also Romanian, <br />Polish, and even French. Some are incredibly <br />young: the youngest is thirteen. <br />They stand edgily on street-corners, hardly <br />looking at each other. Long-standing neglect <br />and an absence of both authority and employment <br />have led to what are now ten nights of writing. <br /> <br />[First published in The Observer]<br /><br />Amit Chaudhuri<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-writers-3/
