Poetry

It goes on one at a time,
it starts when you care to act,
it starts when you do it again after they said no,
it starts when you say we and know who you mean,
and each day you mean one more.

Marge Piercy

Monday, 29 October 2018 21:05

We Will Be Free! Bread and Roses Poetry Anthology 2018

Written by Len McCluskey

in Poetry

Len McCluskey introduces the Bread and Roses Poetry Anthology 2018. We are fast approaching the end of the 2010s. It’s been a decade tarred with the brush of austerity. A decade of unparalleled inequality, where the rich are getting super-rich and the majority of people in poverty are also in…

Saturday, 27 October 2018 20:30

Power Play

Written by Jonathan Edwards

in Poetry

Jonathan Edwards introduces Power Play, Mair De-Gare Pitt's new collection of poems, with images by Jill Powell. What is politics? When I was a younger person, growing up in the South Wales Valleys in the late 1980s, a far-off and mythical land where cornflakes were splashed not with milk but…

Wednesday, 24 October 2018 18:41

Social Mobility

Written by Peter Raynard

in Poetry

Social Mobility by Peter Raynard roll up roll up enter prize for enterprisers, why?we will see you through our newly decorated economic portals like a win on a fairground shy no longer a museum piece of shame the historical artefact uncovered by do-gooding just enoughs to take away the talent…

K2_PUBLISHED_ON Monday, 15 October 2018 10:18

A Day's Work

in Poetry

Written by Chris Norris

A Day’s Work by Chris Norris Will not even the massacre of children in Yemen end the silence over the murderous complicity of the British government? They were little kids on a bus on the way back from a picnic, no doubt laughing and raucous as large groups of children…

Yemen Saudi Arabia BAE Systems Theresa and Philip May Typhoons

K2_PUBLISHED_ON Tuesday, 09 October 2018 12:24

To the Wrong-Siders

in Poetry

Written by Chris Norris

To the Wrong-Siders by Chris Norris There is something in human history like retribution; and it is a rule of historical retribution that its instrument be forged not by the offended, but by the offender himself. The first blow dealt to the French monarchy proceeded from the nobility, not from…

bankers 2008 crash politicians academics journalists generals arms dealers

K2_PUBLISHED_ON Thursday, 04 October 2018 09:46

National Poetry Day: you ask us why we fight

in Poetry

Written by Fran Lock

you ask us why we fight by Fran Lock you can make an inkblot of your nosebleed if you want to. talk and tsk and suckyour teeth. conspiracy and crucible, and last of all is cliché: fighting irish. Tell mehow my fist offends propriety, then name me one good thing…

K2_PUBLISHED_ON Thursday, 04 October 2018 09:30

National Poetry Day: Anatomy of a Bomb Scare

in Poetry

Written by Kevin Higgins

Anatomy of a Bomb Scarefor Jacqueline Walker by Kevin Higgins Tasks such as this are typically implementedon deniable mobile phones,ordered by a raised eyebrow or nodfourth or fifth floor of an unpainted, concrete building,about which no more can be said because, for reasons obvious to both The Guardian and the…

Thursday, 04 October 2018 08:51

National Poetry Day: Symptomatic

Written by Edward Mackinnon

in Poetry

Symptomatic by Edward Mackinnon The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear.- Antonio Gramsci, Prison Notebooks I have watched the wars being re-run nightly,become humane, democretinisationgoing forward, going global, light…

Antonio Gramsci

Thursday, 04 October 2018 08:32

National Poetry Day: Suffer the Wretched

Written by Ian C Smith

in Poetry

Suffer the Wretched by Ian C Smith A youngish couple, a toddler, a hoarse lapdog,spindly trailer loads of depression-era belongings,the sort left on the verge with rubbish binsto vanish overnight when clouds eclipse the moon.He reverses up the driveway, ropes taut, noise levelramping from silent to near-lunatic,next door’s house for…

Thursday, 04 October 2018 07:46

National Poetry Day: Fuck Off Darlings

Written by Martin Hayes

in Poetry

fuck off darlings by Martin Hayes fuck off with your award-winningfuck off with your writer groupsfuck off with your plastic covers of books that contain no heartno gutsfuck off with your equations and rulesyour blank little spaces that are supposed to represent a women's breath a man's sweatfuck off with…

National Poetry Day

Monday, 01 October 2018 20:55

Don't mention the word class! The theft of working-class culture

Written by Fran Lock

in Poetry

Fran Lock exposes the hypocrisy, classism and elitism in contemporary liberal attempts to edit, erode and police working-class participation in the arts, and she calls for the radical, systematic democratisation of culture. Here she goes again! Over the last few months I have been asked to contribute to or participate in…