Verse

Bourgeois Pride.

In every age the left, before it can do anything else, has to debunk the pretensions of those who hold the social and political power. This is especially true when the ruling class is prosperous, triumphant and confident. The British capitalist class was very confident indeed in the first decades of the 19th century, when Britain was becoming the “workshop of the world”, was mistress of the Seas, and had recently conquered the French Empire of Napoleon Bonaparte. It's bourgeoisie was puffed up with pride. In those years, and for the rest of the 19th century and beyond, radicals and socialists...

Our MUA is here to stay!

Our MUA Is Here To Stay! Our precious land, our coat of arms, no backward step be taken, Touch one, touch all, comrades in arms, will never be mistaken, For some corporate lie, their jelly shake, perhaps a hollow wave, For this, our birthright fire tested, tis cradle to the grave. Like bands of gold, we stand the line, beside our comrades true. Your pain is mine, to ensure a time, when love ones comfort you. This sacred place, your vows affirmed, will see the light of day. By those before, who carried the flame, cannot be stripped away. So Hutchison, where’s your mind, and where’s your soul...

Fence Sitter

Fence Sitter They’re cutting help to those in need — What case to vote against? This is a tricky one indeed I’m staying on the fence Scrap targets for child poverty? My mind is wracked with doubt Perhaps, no — maybe, probably — I’m sitting this one out What’s wrong with capping benefits? Could someone please explain? There’s good things, bad things — call it quits I think I’ll just abstain Yes, voting No to welfare cuts Would lead to Labour losing! So we must show no heart or guts — My, this is so confusing! It’s been explained to me at last The logic’s mighty fine To be against, we let it...

Hating Tories and other poems

Many of Janine’s poems are, as she says, all about “venting her spleen on the poetic stage”. For this Workers’ Liberty member, socialist-feminist, trade unionist, spoken-word performer, every day has to be a day for hating the Tories. Here are the worst excesses, vanities and unthinking elitism of Tory politicians, vilified and poked fun at: “Shall I compare thee to a winter’s day? Thou art more cold and more intemperate...” Here too, thoughts about terrible injustices which might otherwise be one day’s headline in a local newspaper, shared on Facebook, then forgotten. A poem about Daniel...

Two classes of calamity

Edward Harold Physick was born in 1878 in Ealing, London, and from 1910 wrote under the name E H Visiak. He became a clerk with the Indo-European Telegraph Company, but was sacked from his job when he wrote poetry opposing World War One. This short poem is from his 1916 collection, The Battle Fiends. After the government introduced conscription in 1916, Visiak became a conscientious objector. After the war, he stopped publishing poetry, and spent the rest of a low-profile career writing novels, short stories and literary criticism. Calamity by E H Visiak The people mourn. Grief’s wireless...

Song of the mothers

During the 1914-18 war, well over 2,000 people wrote published poetry in the UK. Most of them were not soldiers writing from the trenches. The “soldier poets” such as Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon spoke eloquently of the suffering in the trenches to a British public still being told of the war’s glory by their rulers. Rightly, their poetry is getting plenty of attention in the centenary of that war. But what of the poets on the home front? Many also speak eloquently, of the harsh realities of the war for those back home. This poem articulates the anguish of women whose sons went to war to...

Queen Mab

Percy Bysshe Shelley is known as a romantic poet. He was also a radical, militant atheist, campaigner for women’s rights and Catholic emancipation in Ireland. His first poem Queen Mab, written when he was only 20 years old, was used by the Chartists as an educational text (they may well have been unaware of who wrote it). In Queen Mab, Shelley uses the literary device of a fantasy fairy taking a child away from Earth to gain a perspective upon it. It looks at how seemingly permanent and strong systems from the beginning of time have collapsed and fallen. It looks at tyranny and injustice...

From the Youth of All Nations

From the Youth of All Nations reads to me as a bitter complaint against the ruling classes on all sides of the First World War playing out their arguments with the sufferings and lives of soldiers. Its title declares both a bitterness of the young against old leaders, and an internationalist outlook. Then its fifteen four-line (quatrain) stanzas spell out the manipulations of the call to war and promise rebellion rather than reverence. The strict iambic tetrameter rhythm creates an impression of an army marching to settle scores with its rulers. Sadly, I can’t tell you much about the poet, H C...

How war changed them

Wilfrid Wilson Gibson was born in Hexham, Northumberland in 1878. He made his living as a poet after leaving school, at first writing poetry in the standard, Victorian-Romantic style. But during his twenties he grew more socially aware, and became well-known for writing about workers and poor people in accessible, everyday language. Once war started in 1914, Gibson — now living in London, and friends with other poets including Edward Marsh and Rupert Brooke — applied his writing style to soldiers' experiences of the trenches. He did not fight in the trenches himself: he volunteered, but was...

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