I feel as if censorship is both a pro and a con. In whatever you do, you are trying to get your point across, and sometimes you cannot do that for whatever reason. It may be that the topic is controversial or it may trigger people. As a poet, my point may be proved by a lot of imagery, or hard facts. I can conjure up an image of whatever I desire in whoever’s mind. There are a lot of sensitive people in this world and for that reason, we are asked to “tone it down”. Now I can only ask, why am I, a poet, told to lessen the sense of MY medium. I truly feel that if you are that sensitive, don’t attend, read, ever participate in whatever is happening. But again, I see censorship as a pro, more so, it is a challenge. When you are confined within four walls, it will drive you to madness, which will become creativity. When you are not allowed to do one thing, you do others. So with censorship, you will find loopholes and crafty ways to do what you do best. You will be forced to use your wit. Triggering scenarios in literary pieces are a big reason censorship is used, but trigger warnings can combat that.
I love that no matter what, you’re always yourself in your writing, and that you don’t change for other people. I respect that. Many writers (and other artists), including me, fear judgement from others and tend to “censor” their writing. I love the line, “Now I can only ask, why am I, a poet, told to lessen the sense of MY medium.” That really got to me, and got me questioning why I “tone down” my writing, as to not offend or scare anyone. Other writers will question themselves too while reading. Thank you:)
I love how you neither confirmed nor denied that sometimes we need to censor our work, instead using the idea of trigger warnings to kind of fight against needing to censor work. It works in the same way as TV ratings, except the author chooses what is too vulgar, profane, etc. Nice work.