Mike Jenkins

Mike Jenkins

Mike Jenkins is an award-winning Welsh poet and author and unofficial poet for Cardiff City FC. His new book of political poetry, Nobody's Subject, is published in Summer 2016.

Wern My Fault
Wednesday, 02 March 2022 09:51

Wern My Fault

Published in Poetry

Wern My Fault

by Mike Jenkins

There wuz this fuckin ard gang
Led by this bloke Vlad
(Arfta some ol rooler).

Ee didn give a toss
'Bout trainers on wires,
Ee wan’ed more terrortree.

We wern gunna take no messin,
Ee knew t keep out -
We’d flash ower weapons.

No way ee’d risk it,
Noh even with is boyz
All tooled up an ready.

Fancied isself ee did,
Ewsed t ride orses bare-back,
Shirt off six pack.

Till one night they invaded
Ower Igh Street askin f trouble,
Shoutin theyer gobs off.

Joey goh stabbed, I cut
One of em ‘cross is face
T stop im attackin.

It wern my fault see,
I woz on’y defendin myself.
P’lice wouldn lissen.

Rising: A callout for an anthology of Welsh radical poetry
Tuesday, 05 October 2021 12:39

Rising: A callout for an anthology of Welsh radical poetry

Published in Poetry

Mike Jenkins issues a callout for a new Culture Matters anthology. Image above: Rising, by Gustavius Payne

On St. David’s Day, March 1st 2022, Culture Matters plans to launch a new anthology of radical Welsh poetry. It will be edited by Mike Jenkins, founder member of the Red Poets collective and an Associate Editor of Culture Matters. It will be widely distributed as an ebook and will also available as a printed book, if funding efforts are successful.

Submissions are invited, and here are some guidelines:

Guidelines 

1. You may submit one or two original poems in English or Welsh, each no more than 50 lines long.

2. Entries should broadly deal with themes relevant to working-class life, politics, communities and culture. A particular focus of the anthology will be ‘Rising’.

3. Entries should be sent to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. by midnight on 31st January 2022. No entries will be accepted after that date.

4. Please include the poem(s) and your name, address, and contact details in the body of the email.

5. All entries remain the copyright of the author but Culture Matters will have the right to publish them online, as an ebook and as a printed book.

Capitalism is working
Thursday, 30 September 2021 08:23

Capitalism is working

Published in Poetry

Capitalism is working

by Mike Jenkins

We’re running out of petrol
On the road to oblivion.

Food or heat the choice
For many who are struggling.

The sea and the rivers
Have become our enemies.

Thatcher hacked identities
Many years ago.

Talk about North Korea
As TV fawns over monarchy.

We’re paying for vanity railway
As ours are cancelled, running late.

Homeless people beg on busy streets,
Cups empty as second homes;

Language and culture has no insurance policy,
Like a redundant person, alone.

Women who steal ripped from families
While Prince Andrew still goes free.

Supermarket shelves like the ol’ USSR,
But capitalism’s working, you see.

Recording of Online Launch of Three Red Poets from Cymru
Sunday, 11 April 2021 13:25

Recording of Online Launch of Three Red Poets from Cymru

Published in Poetry

On April 13th there was a free online launch of new collections from three Red Poets, all from Cymru. it is available at.....

https://us02web.zoom.us/rec/share/WenWgDy1StyKJpDKRYv6DQt0vgsuPwy1_8FDeXcBHyDN6Jnq8DKyRZbdoQMj8KPw.R22tn8uSVkXhXc2A  Passcode: wy$9vc!p

The three books are all recent publications from Culture Matters. They are Ballad of the Black Domain by Alun Rees, Our Father Eclipse by Rebecca Lowe and Anonymous Bosch by Mike Jenkins, with photos by Dave Lewis. The books are all available for sale in the Books section of the website.

The books are all inspired by the socialist republicanism of their authors, yet are still quite different. Alun Rees focuses on history (especially of the Valleys), Rebecca Lowe deals with issues of pacifism, spirituality and the environment, while Mike Jenkins looks at his home town of Merthyr Tydfil as a microcosm of working-class struggle.

9781912710225     9781912710379

She Died Alone
Monday, 14 September 2020 08:02

She Died Alone

Published in Poetry

She Died Alone

by Mike Jenkins

She died there in hospital,
no husband, Sissy, daughter Ingrid
no church kin around her
and at her funeral of regulation 10
her own Lusamba saw the coffin
and could not imagine her within.

She was a mother to everyone
who was blown into Victoria station
lost for food or direction,
took them home like injured creatures
fed them till they were strong
watched them fly, never to return.

The concourse deserted like Christmas Eve
only without the straggling drunkards
or last-minuters wandering homewards,
when a man cursed and spat hatred
announcing that he had Covid
(though he later tested negative).

She'd worked all hours overtime
to send money home to her mother;
they made her work without PPE
sickness made her vulnerable to disease.
She died alone, the banners remember
outside her station chants of – 'Justice for Belly Mujinga!'

Belly Mujinga was a ticket controller who worked at Victoria station, originally from the Democratic Republic of the Congo. She died on April 5th of Covid-19. She was spat on by a man who claimed he had Covid, though later tested negative. She had been working without PPE. ‘Justice for Belly Mujinga’ was a vital part of recent BLM protests.

May Day Greetings from the Red Poets / Cyfarchion O'r Beirdd Cochion
Thursday, 30 April 2020 08:31

May Day Greetings from the Red Poets / Cyfarchion O'r Beirdd Cochion

Published in Festivals/ Events

YN GADARN / IN SOLIDARITY

Poetry can change people’s consciousness, of that I’m confident. Our revolution must embrace words and song, dance and film, art and journalism and give voice to the many struggles of those whose aspirations are too easily destroyed by poverty.

We’d like to express our solidarity with the struggles against capitalism and imperialism throughout the world. We are a collective of poets based in Cymru/Wales who have been in existence for some 27 years. We have produced an annual magazine of left-wing poetry from Cymru and beyond, a live CD and a number of poetry books. Our next publication (in 2021) will be a history of the Red Poets by 6 of our regular writers. We were born out of Cymru Goch (Red Wales) the now defunct Welsh Socialists and myself and Marc Jones, the other co-editor (from Wrescam) were both active members.

One of the highlights of our calendar has been the Merthyr Rising Festival at the end of May each year, which celebrates Trade Unionism and the history of the Welsh working class. There are speeches, debates, poetry and lots of music and my poem ‘Bring the Rising Home!’, from a book of the same name published by Culture Matters, brings together the history and the music.

Bring the Rising Home!

by Mike Jenkins

Bring it home
bring the Rising home!

the truck shops
the loan sharks

the ironmasters
the opencasters

the British military
the Acts of Tories

the Welsh language
then and today

chwyldro –
a turning of the times

gweriniaeth –
rule by people not kings and queens

bring it home
bring the Rising home!

the demand for bread
the Food Banks

the bailiffs knocking
the bailiffs ringing

martyrs on the streets
suicides on benefits

the debtors’ courts
the disability assessments

and yet, the mills rolled -
while now the drummers beat.

Notes - chwyldro - Welsh for revolution
gweriniaeth - Welsh for republic

May Day 1

This is the cover of issue 25, with artwork by Fred Fitton a long-time activist from Wigan, who used to teach art in Swansea.
Here’s a poem from that same issue which wittily describes the Rebecca Riots of 1839, a widespread protest against the toll gates:

What A Riot!
(Wales,1839)

by Phil Knight

Her hat and her Sunday frock
fitted me to a tee, but she said
"Lay off the corset cariad".
But like a fool I would not listen.
Well they said "come as women"
and the wife never crossed
our threshold without her corset on.
So I would have felt undressed like
without it on, see.

It was a bit snug to start,
however when I was running
and whooping on the Toll Gate
I was fair dying of breath.
Some of the boys even laughted at me
and them all dressed as ladies.
Ladies with beards and hairy arms.

Never since the beginning of time
had St. Clears seen such a sight.
"A most shameful spectacle! A return
to the days of Sodom and Gomorrah"
said the Carmarthen Journal.
We burnt the gates of our oppressors.
We danced and sang, well they did.
My corset was fair killing me for breath.
None of the other boys wore corsets.
However the Reverend had
his wife's pink pantaloons on,
but they say that's a regular thing.
Still I know better for next time.

So up with Rebecca's Daughters!
Down with the Toll Gates!
Down with the soldiers!
Down with the Whitland Trust!
But take the wife's advice boys
and keep your hands off the corsets.

May day 2

Many of the poets included in the recent anthology of radical poetry from Cymru ‘Onward/Ymlaen!’ published by Culture Matters have also appeared in ‘Red Poets’ magazines over the years. Both the cover and several images in the book are by Merthyr artist Gus Payne, whose work has been closely associated with us for many years. One of the poems in this book which embodies our spirit is by a poet who has appeared in every single issue of the magazine, Alun Rees, a retired award-winning sports journalist. This poem won the Harri Webb Prize:

Taffy Is A Welshman

by Alun Rees

Taffy is a Welshman,
Taffy is no thief.
Someone came to Taffy’s house
and stole a leg of beef.

Taffy made no protest,
for he doesn’t like a row,
so the someone called on him again
and stole the bloody cow.

They stole his coal and iron,
they stole his pastures, too.
They even stole his language
and flushed it down the loo.

Taffy is a Welshman,
Taffy is a fool.
Taffy voted no, no, no
when they offered him home rule.

Six days a week upon his knees
Taffy dug for coal.
On the seventh he was kneeling, too,
praying for his soul.

And now the mines are closing down
and chapel’s had its day,
Taffy still lives upon his knees,
for he knows no other way.

Now sometimes Taffy’s brother
will start a row or so,
but you can bank on Taffy:
he doesn’t want to know.

For when they hanged Penderyn
he had nothing much to say,
and when Saunders Lewis went to jail
he looked the other way.

Taffy is a Welshman
who likes to be oppressed.
He was proud to tug his forelock
to a Crawshay or a Guest.

They give him tinsel royals,
so he has a pint of beer,
and sings God Bless the Prince of Wales
as he joins the mob to cheer.

Now Taffy is a fighter
when he hears the bugle call.
Name any war since Agincourt:
Taffy’s seen them all.

He’s fought in France and Germany
and many another land;
he’s fought by sea and fought by air
and fought on desert sand.

He’s fought for many a foreign flag
in many a foreign part,
for Taffy is a Welshman,
proud of his fighting heart.

He’s fought the wide world over,
he’s given blood and bone.
He’s fought for every bloody cause
except his bloody own.

welsh independence march ifan morgan jones llinos dafydd 27.jpg

Activism has always been integral to the Red Poets collective and as well as doing benefits for strikers, against the poll tax and for CND, many of us are still involved in various groups, parties and movements. Ness Owen’s ‘Caernarfon’ (from the forthcoming issue, 26) describes a march in North Wales on 27th July 2019, attended by over 10,000 supporters of independence:

Caernarfon

by Ness Owen

We arrived later than
we thought, running
to catch up, me and
an old school friend
short-cutted through
the car-park like we’d
lost the bus. Holyhead
Welsh standing on the
verge, watching clouds
breaking over Môn,
looking down Balaclafa
Road to a sea of red,
green, white, of Yes,
of Cymru, of rhydd,
fy ngwlad, fy nyfodol.
A wave flowing from
doc, rushing through
arches built to keep us
out, sunglasses on for
face detectors. Tim yn
ffycin cael wep fi. By
Black Boy, clickers count
our true numbers. The
castle is surrounded, stones
echo with our soft tread,
onto Y Maes, no tears of
blood, today, our hearts
in the hands of each other.

rhydd – free
dyfodol – future
Tim yn ffycin cael wep fi – Holyhead Welsh for ‘you’re not having my fucking face’
Y Maes – square in Caernarfon

9781912710089

Finally, I’ll leave you with the title poem from my book in Merthyr dialect from Culture Matters, ‘From Aberfan t Grenfell’, which was illustrated superbly by Swansea artist Alan Perry. It's about two man-made tragedies where working-class people suffered greatly:

From Aberfan t Grenfell

by Mike Jenkins

When I seen tha fire
blazin through-a flats
like they woz wax,
I thought o Pant Glas
children an teachers,
graves of rubble an sludge.

When I seen ow
the Tories didn wanna know,
I thought o Lord Robens
an George Bloody Thomas,
of ower Council oo’d bin tol
of the tip movin long ago.

When I seen them people
come from all over
with clothes an food,
I thought of rescuers
from all over-a Valleys,
come t search
f life in-a ruins.

When I seen tha block,
a ewge charred remains
a dark memorial t the pooer
kept there like battree ens,
I thought of-a tip come down :
ow ev’ry sum an song
never knew an answer or endin. 

YN GADARN / IN SOLIDARITY

Onward / Ymlaen! An anthology of radical poetry from contemporary Wales
Friday, 14 February 2020 12:14

Onward / Ymlaen! An anthology of radical poetry from contemporary Wales

Published in Poetry

Mike Jenkins introduces a new anthology of Welsh radical poetry

 These are left-wing poems from Cymru rather than ‘Wales’. Why do I stress this?

As the Welsh language poet Menna Elfyn rightly points out in notes to her poem ‘Neb-ach’, the very words ‘Wales’ and ‘Welsh’ are both associated with being ‘foreign’: we call ourselves what others have chosen to call us – namely the English.

I choose Cymru because it means ‘fellow-countrymen’ and is intrinsically about belonging and co-operation. Poetry also has always been about social solidarity – it is fundamental and not peripheral to our society. Every year at the National Eisteddfod we crown a bard for his/her free verse and chair another for their work in cynghanedd (an ancient verse-form).

During the ceremony the Archdruid (who is, at present, Myrddin ap Dafydd, and is represented in this anthology) calls for ‘Heddwch!’ and the entire audience responds by calling out that Welsh word for peace.

Bards have traditionally come from many different backgrounds and one of the most renowned was ‘Hedd Wyn’ (bardic name of Ellis Humphrey Evans) who was a shepherd who fought and died in the 1st World War. An avowed pacifist, he was chaired posthumously at the Eisteddfod in 1917, when they draped a black cloak over the Chair in his absence.

In Cymru, poets have also invariably had close associations with their ‘milltir sgwar’, areas of belonging and identity, and you can see this in the work of many  here, such as Ness Owen from Ynys Môn (Anglesey) and Gemma June Howell with her Caerffili dialect poems.

Ness writes in both Welsh and English, with the language and her feminism at the fore in her work –

Tongue-tied
excusing our way through
we breath in Mamiaith

Gemma hails originally from a working-class estate in Caerffili called Graig yr Rhacca. She writes in the voices of its inhabitants, for all their faults so full of humour and energy –

A’rite? Nairmz Rhiannon
an I leve on thuh Rock.
I luv drinken ciduh
and I luv sucken cock.

As co-editor of ‘Red Poets’ magazine for 26 years (we annually publish left-wing poetry from Cymru and beyond) I am acutely aware of the importance of socialist and republican politics to our poets. Most of them have appeared in that magazine over the years. In particular I think of Herbert Williams, Alun Rees, Tim Richards and Jazz, who were there at the very beginning.

The power of satire is vital to these poets, and Rees’s ‘Taffy is a Welshman’ deservedly won the Harri Webb Prize. It takes a well-known nursery rhyme and develops it into a scathing look at the history of the Welsh working class, fighting imperialist wars –

He’s fought the wide world over,
he’s given blood and bone.
He’s fought for every bloody cause
except his bloody own.

For many, their poetic heroes have been the likes of Idris Davies and Harri Webb, uncompromising poets never afraid to take on the burning issues of their times: Davies dealing with strikes and the Depression and Webb with the rise of Welsh nationalism and sense of Cymru as an oppressed colony.

In the 60s when Alun Rees, Herbert Williams and Sally Roberts Jones came to the fore, the worlds of Welsh and English language poetry were largely separate. Nowadays, poets like Siôn Tomos Owen and Rufus Mufasa move between both their languages, often within individual poems. Rufus is also a quite amazing performer, somewhat like Kate Tempest but with more singing and an emphasis on dub rather than rap. Her work on the page is quite distinct from her performance poetry, though both move easily from Welsh to English –

Y bwrdd cadarn, caer / our fortress made of blankets

From the multicultural society of Cardiff to former industrial heartlands of slate, iron and coal, there are a strong feelings of injustice and anger shared by many working-class communities throughout the British Isles.

One younger poet, Hanan Issa (who I met and read alongside at the Homeless World Cup in Cardiff) draws on her Muslim background, here reflecting on an incident in Marrakech –

Immersed in the maelstrom
of a Marrakech market.

It has to be said that the emerging and enthusiastic independence movement, which many of these poets are part of and which is led by non-partisan groups like Yes Cymru, has created a sense of hope more akin to Scotland in recent years. I wanted to reflect this in the title ‘Onward/ Ymlaen!’ which I took from Patrick Jones’s poem ‘The Guerilla Tapestry’ to encapsulate this spirit –

Following the dream of emancipation
Your power we shall decline
Ymlaen Ymlaen

Jones’s own journey from Labour supporter to embracing the emerging Indy movement is one which truly reflects our politically fluid times. And the same word is echoed in Phil Howells’s poem about the Merthyr Rising which took place in my home town in 1831, when the ironworkers rose up against their masters to take over the whole town and, it’s claimed, raise the red flag for the first time.

In Welsh the slogan we’ve used for decades has been ‘Fe godwn ni eto!’ (We will rise again!). Until now it seemed like the futile call of the few. Today, it is a real possibility for the many. Despite the Tory victory in the Westminster election, there is still plenty of room for optimism and these poems are sure indicators that the spirit of 1831 and the Chartists live on.

Onward / Ymlaen! An anthology of radical poetry from contemporary Wales, edited by Mike Jenkins, with a Foreword from Mark Serwotka, General Secretary of PCS, and with images by Gustavius Payne. 170 pps. Available only as an ebook for £5, please contact This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

ISBN: 978-1-912710-16-4

Seesaw

from Onward / Ymlaen!

by Rebecca Lowe

Children are playing across borders,
A Mexican girl with curly pigtails
Tests her balance against
Her American counterpart –
She edges nervously
Before whirling upward,
Giggling, giddy, arms outstretched
To the sky.

Children are playing
Through barriers built by grown-ups,
Smiling through walls of steel and barbed wire,
The universal language
Of laughter.

Who's up? Who's down?
It's a balancing act, this,
A seesaw diplomacy,
Who will falter first?

As the walls are built
Ever higher,
What will it take
To make them tumble,
To make them fall?

For now, the only sound
You can hear is laughter,
The child beyond the border
Throws back her head and, grinning,
Flings herself in open embrace:
Above her, the sky is endless.

(Note: In July 2019 artists placed pink seesaws through slats in the fenceposts across the US-Mexico border, allowing children from both sides of the border to play together, despite the physical barrier of the fence.)

To A Different Country
Wednesday, 06 November 2019 09:47

To A Different Country

Published in Poetry

To A Different Country

by Mike Jenkins

We were selling tickets
for a journey to a different country
(our own, yet changed totally).
At the station our flags flapped
in a strange wind
stirring from valley to mountain
despite the frosty stillness
of another Monday morning.

‘But it’s the same old train!’
moaned the half-asleep
commuters heading for the city
as they took our leaflets
which explained the way.
‘They’ve only painted it up,
it still runs late
or over-crowded too often.’

The train followed the river down valley
and high up on the stonework
of an old viaduct plinth
someone had painted ‘Cofiwch Dryweryn’;
was it the ghost of Meic Stephens
suspended on dragon’s breath?

‘You will arrive on time.
We will build it together.
There is no guarantee,
no money back or return;
but watch it emerge
at the end of the line:
our hands, our imaginations.’

Notes                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    'Cofiwch Dryweryn' means 'Remember Tryweryn'. Over the past year in Wales many people have graffitied this: on walls , rocks, bridges and most recently on an old railway viaduct plinth in the Taff valley. It follows the vandalism of the original one on a rock near Aberystwyth, originally painted by poet and editor Meic Stephens in the 1960s referring to the drowning of a valley and clearance of the village of Capel Celyn, in the Tryweryn valley. See here

Those Hands
Tuesday, 27 March 2018 10:42

Those Hands

Published in Poetry

Mike Jenkins offers a prose-poem inspired by Martin Hayes’ book of poetry ‘The things our hands once stood for’ 

Those Hands

for Martin Hayes                                    

   I’ll never forget those hands resting on his lap like two sleeping cats till his body was wracked by a coughing fit and they woke and shook disturbed by dreams of slobbering, snarling jaws.

   Those hands knew deep down what I had acquired in studies, courses of rivers and streams black on his palms; while I had merely drawn a map of the Valleys with a shaded area to mean coalfield, like a tainted lung.

   Those hands – the pick ‘n’ shovel of them – had known the obdurate seams, blind tunnels and a dust so dense it seemed a swarm, a plague.

   As he talked they opened up and shone, glowed with his up-down tones which followed the streets down to the nearby park and Nye Bevan museum and back uphill sucking at precious breath.

   As he talked, they played like the kids he’d never had; cats scampering along fence-tops and clawing up bark.

   Such hands you’ll never see again, engrained with stories of his butties, of desperate rescues, of pit-ponies born into dark galleries.

   Those hands had been buried, were a print of carbon; had risen to rub the gentle flames of skin, to a hearth where he sat with his missis coaxing the fire to a high burning.    

Ewsed T Be Ooverville
Monday, 01 February 2016 17:20

Ewsed T Be Ooverville

Published in Poetry

Em’tiness. Them factree sheds.
The las shift leaves
an ev’ry machine stops.

We ewsed t be Ooverville,
ower washin-machines
sent all over
like rails an cannons
from them ol ironworks.

We could even afford t larf
bout Sinclair an is C5,
puttin it in-a window
as a crazee failure.

Now, we drive away
f’r the las time
with nowhere t go :
the toy factree’s gone
an we ardly make nothin.

It’s all retail an ousin
in this once great town :
but oo cun spend
an nobuddy’s buildin.

All them yers, all them skills
wasted like my son
with his degree, signin on.

Em’tiness. Rot an rats move in
an on’y the diggers o Ffos-y-fran
never stoppin like the lines
we left be’ind: the memrees
o frens stay welded,
as joints break an roof’s collapsin.

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