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

Wednesday, 21 November 2018 14:02

Ruses and Fuses

Written by Fran Lock

in Poetry

Fran Lock introduces Ruses and Fuses, her new follow-up collection to Muses and Bruises. There’s something Arlette Farge says, about history being a collision of competing logics, that is applicable here. By which I mean, this is not, in any literal or linear sense, the story of English radicalism. It…

Wednesday, 21 November 2018 13:55

One of These Dead Places

Written by Peter Raynard

in Poetry

Peter Raynard introduces the new collection of poems by Jane Burn. How much does history affect individual lives? How much of it is mere backdrop – a news item, a documentary, film, book, etc. you see or read after dinner or before you go to bed? If you are a…

Wednesday, 21 November 2018 13:45

From Aberfan t Grenfell

Written by Jonathan Edwards

in Poetry

Jonathan Edwards presents the title poem from the new collection by Mike Jenkins, illustrated with images by Alan Perry, and introduces the collection. From Aberfan t Grenfell by Mike Jenkins When I seen tha fireblazin through-a flatslike they woz wax,I thought o Pantglaschildren an teachers,graves of rubble an sludge. When…

K2_PUBLISHED_ON Monday, 29 October 2018 21:05

We Will Be Free! Bread and Roses Poetry Anthology 2018

in Poetry

Written by Len McCluskey

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…

K2_PUBLISHED_ON Saturday, 27 October 2018 20:30

Power Play

in Poetry

Written by Jonathan Edwards

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…

K2_PUBLISHED_ON Wednesday, 24 October 2018 18:41

Social Mobility

in Poetry

Written by Peter Raynard

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

Tuesday, 09 October 2018 12:24

To the Wrong-Siders

Written by Chris Norris

in Poetry

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

Thursday, 04 October 2018 09:46

National Poetry Day: you ask us why we fight

Written by Fran Lock

in Poetry

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…

Thursday, 04 October 2018 09:30

National Poetry Day: Anatomy of a Bomb Scare

Written by Kevin Higgins

in Poetry

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