A poet's work is to name the unnameable, to point at frauds, to take sides, start arguments, shape the world, and stop it going to sleep.

Salman Rushdie made this remark in the early 1990s while reflecting on the public responsibilities of writers in the wake of the controversy surrounding The Satanic Verses and the broader “culture wars” over censorship, religion, and free expression. In essays and speeches from this period, Rushdie argues that literature is not merely decorative: it intervenes in public life by challenging orthodoxies and exposing lies. The line is often cited as part of his defense of imaginative freedom and of the writer’s right—and duty—to provoke, dissent, and keep societies intellectually awake rather than complacent.

Rushdie frames poetry (and, by extension, literature) as an active civic force rather than a decorative art. “Name the unnameable” suggests giving language to suppressed experiences and taboo truths; “point at frauds” casts the writer as a critic of hypocrisy and propaganda. The insistence on “take sides” and “start arguments” rejects neutrality, implying that art inevitably participates in moral and political struggle. “Shape the world” emphasizes literature’s power to influence imagination and public discourse, while “stop it going to sleep” warns against complacency—art should keep societies alert, questioning, and awake to injustice and complexity.