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

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

K2_PUBLISHED_ON Monday, 01 October 2018 20:55

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

in Poetry

Written by Fran Lock

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…

ACE classism McDonalds Nationwide Oxford Chair of Poetry Movement for Cultural Democracy Slambassadors Proletarian Poetry Rap Party

K2_PUBLISHED_ON Saturday, 29 September 2018 18:20

The Song of the Low: The Chartist Ernest Jones advises the Labour Party

in Poetry

Written by Mike Sanders

Mike Sanders explains how Ernest Jones's poem expresses the kind of radical social transformation that the Labour Party is now offering. Addressing the Labour Party conference on September 26th 2018, Jeremy Corbyn quoted the following lines from Ernest Jones, the Chartist leader and poet: And what we get - and…

K2_PUBLISHED_ON Saturday, 22 September 2018 17:05

Poetry on the Picket Line

in Poetry

Written by Phill Jupitus

Phill Jupitus wrote the Foreword for this new anthology, which is available here. All proceeds of sale will go towards strike funds. I have always thought there’s an unrecognised grace and beauty in a picket line. Also, they are a huge embarrassment to the organisations being picketed. The fact that,…

K2_PUBLISHED_ON Friday, 14 September 2018 16:11

Thursday

in Poetry

Written by Peter Knaggs

Thursday by Peter Knaggs The racks of bikinis and sunglasses and slippersand dressing gowns, the shelves of water jugs and balti dishes have gone and so have the people who sold them. A man called Lionbar has jemmied the firedoor.He’s making himself comfortable in menswear,abandoned of everything men wear. He…

Friday, 14 September 2018 16:03

Things that can fly

Written by Elizabeth Gibson

in Poetry

Things that can fly by Elizabeth Gibson You tell me, excitedly, how there is a hill in Azerbaijanthat is so full of natural gas it is always on fire. I agreethat is interesting, and maybe we can go there, but wishyour generation realised that right here we walk on coal.A…

Monday, 10 September 2018 08:18

Kipling Buildings

Written by Alan Morrison

in Poetry

Kipling Buildings With some debt to Rudyard Kipling's 'If' by Alan Morrison If you can keep your head when all about youAre spy cameras, a deliberate delayOf the appointment time in an attemptTo break your spirit, a protracted waitIn a claustrophobic, clinical-looking room,A neutrally decorated purgatorySilent except for the rumbling…

Monday, 03 September 2018 22:19

lucky charms

Written by Martin Hayes

in Poetry

lucky charms by Martin Hayes some of the people I work with have made these spaces where they spend 11 hours a day protected areasthey have developed elaborate internal defences that have convinced them that these spots they sit inare almost sacredthey use plastic figurines, pictures, stones and cactus plants…

Sunday, 19 August 2018 20:20

Measure Twice, Cut Once

Written by Jon Tait

in Poetry

Measure Twice, Cut Once by Jon Tait When I was 17, the builder’s leader Albert Williams told me to get off site and go and get a degree, swap the sawdust and hard hat for books and a mortar board, and I should have said then that the only mortar…