The Spirit of the Age - Ken Loach

Looking forward to seeing this new documentary by one of my favourite film makers Ken Loach. Which is in cinemas from today.
On all accounts an impassioned documentary about the spirit  of unity which buoyed Britain during the war years. Carried through to create a vision  of a fairer, united society.

'1945 was a pivotal year in British history. The unity that carried Britain through the war allied to the bitter memories of the inter-war years led to a vision of a better society. The spirit of the age was to be our brother's and our sister's keeper. Ken Loach has used film from Britain's regional and national archives, alongside sound recordings and contemporary interviews to create a rich political and social narrative. The Spirit of'45 hopes to illuminate and celebrate a period of unprecedented community spirit in the UK, the impact of which endured for many years and which may yet be rediscovered today. 1945 was a pivotal year in British history. The Unity that carried Britain through the war allied to the bitter memories of inter-war years led to a vision of a better society. The impact of this unprecedented  community spirit in the UK, has endured for many years and which may be rediscovered today.'

Loach wants to follow up the general release, with Q &;A sessions to debate the feasibility of a new left party.
In the end Unity is strength, and I welcome Mr Loach's contribution,and support too, all  those that  fight back, but I do not look anymore to Parliament for rescue. Right now , in this age of austerity, our beloved Welare State is being torn apart, by a wrecking crew long past caring. We need a new spirit , a coalition of resistance, as the failure of capitalism implodes all around.
Meanwhile on the screens tonight, this evil spirit of nauseousness and nastiness, the smell of sulphur fills the air.

London Poll Tax Riot Documentary 1990 - The Battle of Trafalgar FULL

This should be watched with consideration to all other media accounts of rioting:

'The Battle of Trafalgar: An account of the anti-poll tax demonstration 31st March 1990, one that is radically different from that presented by TV news.
Eye witness tell their stories against a backdrop of footage showing the days events as they unfolded. Demonstrators' testiomonies raise some uncomfortable questions. Questions about public order policing, the independence and accountability of the media and the right to demonstrate.'

Next month sees the introduction of the Bedroom Tax, a policy  that seems to be in total chaos at the moment. We must not forget that the Poll Tax was eventually overturned  because resistance was so high. When the bedroom tax hits us, again the people will not take it quietly. When people get the taste of bitterness and venom there will be implications, and it will not be pretty.

Just a Cut Up

Bad poems I sometimes cut into pieces
Don't  like to throw them away,
This one hangs by a thread
Perhaps if I add a word like rescue
It might just about save her
Or a random phrase,a statement of intent,
And if I now reveal, there is no spring
Only the waiting and anticipation,
Outside, knitted together, pencilled with menace.
There is uncertainty in every thought
These  words could disappear in a moment,
Tomorrow, could reappear in another arrangement
Perhaps you will hear nothing, only emptiness
Maybe this will be enough ,for this one to survive.

No to Fascists on the Streets of Wales: No to the National Front in Swansea 9th March

On 9th March the National Front will be holding a parade on the streets of Swansea, where they will be out spewing their brand of racial hatred. I will be going up tomorrow morning to stand with others in solidarity to to show that they are not wanted in Wales or anywhere else.
Their presence is an insult to all Welsh people who fought against fascism in the Spanish Civil War and the Second World War, and the many people maimed and murdered in the Swansea blitz.
The National Front are gathering as part of World WideWhite Pride Day , this is not about pride though just an excuse to promote their bigoted fascist ideals. I believe in freedom of speech but  the National Front have no right to march, their insidious ideas a direct opposite to all that freedom stands for, they are an unapologetic neo-nazi organisation who would crush the diversity and openess that fly under freedom's wings. Their ideology linked  historically in  opposition to all concepts of fraternity and equality, brutally supressing all opposition and criticism.
Where they gather however small, their evil  is released and must be oppossed. If such groups as the National Front, the English Defence Leaque and the British National Party and their various offshoots are not confronted then they will inevitably grow in size, look at Golden Dawn in Greece as a recent example.
These are some of the reasons why I am travelling to Swansea to vent my opposition to their insidious views.
Fighting fascism has long been a proud Welsh tradition. Wherever they emerge  from their dark holes they have been face with loud hostile opposition. They are simply not welcome on our streets.
Their is verified information that the National Front will be forced to undertake a static protest in a back street car park near the strand area of Swansea. United Against Fasism will be holding a counter demo in the Strand Quay. So it is possible  their will be a kettle situation, we must take their actions seriously and oppose any attempt to bring their hate to our streets.
Stay safe. No Pasaran.

More details here

No to National Front White Pride Demo in Swansea/Facebook
http://www.facebook.com/events/113020642216513/

Woody Guthrie - All you fascist bound to lose

Arundhati Roy ( b.24/11/62)- "Another world is not only possible, she is on her way.".

For International Women's Day

Uno de los imprescindibles /The Indispensable ones - Bertolt Brecht ( for Hugo Chavez 10/2/54 - 5/3/13 R.I.P)

Uno de los imprescidibles/ The indispensable ones

Those who are weak don't fight.
Those who are stronger might fight
for an hour.
Those who are stronger still might fight
for many years.
The strongest fight
their whole life.
They are the indispensable ones.

- Bertolt Brecht ( The Mother, a play)

Ivor Cutler (Surrealist,humourist b. Ibrox, Glasgow 15/1/23- 3/3/06) - READY/ ASTONISHED

                                                   
                                                Picture by Joyce Edwards

(ah Ivor, I still miss ya, your lovely whisper, the harmonium drifting among the clouds,beyond the dark places, the joy of cosy notion, in  the world you laughed at , but welcomed every glad day, ah Ivor, I'm still listening, to  your sacrement so sweet, I go the fields find smiles flashing in the undergrowth in an afternoon beyond convention... )

READY

When the soldier arrived, I was ready
-packed. He let me sniff his uniform.
Thick fresh cloth, mid-blue.   We set
off through the spring fields. Imagine
two men in a line moving through a
land without trees, the only vertical
objests. Clouds, fat sheep grazing,
made another layer of country, and us
two, moving pins. We should have swam,
or slithered, to keep the landscape
clear.We wandered on in circles,
what was the hurry,the view stayed
the same. I grew a thick beard and
became a bush. He bedded me in, saw
that I had everythin, shook my hand
and meandered away. So here I was,
near the sound of a stream. The land
was still. A green bird hopped on my
raised elbow, made a wispy nest in the
crook then sat there singing and laying
eggs and drinking the trears of happi-
ness as they slid off my chin.

Gillian Clarke (b.8/6/37) - Miracle on St David's Day

It has kind of become traditional  of me, on this blog to mark St David's Day (Dydd Gwyl Dewi) somehow. Today I offer you a poem by one of our foremost women contemporary poets. She is considered to be one of our greatest living poets, and is currently our national poet.Born in Cardiff, her work is rooted in our landscape, having lived and worked in Wales for most of her life.Since the 1980s  she has resided here in rural Ceredigion . I like what she writes a lot and find her poems  display her mastery of language with all its lucidity and power.
This one  comes  from her Collected Poems (Carcanet Press, 2008). Here she makes a personal recollection,  a true story after she was invited to read poetry to patients in the Occupational Therapy Department of a mental hospital in South Wales, organised to celebrate St Davids Day. The contrast between her opening quote and the rest of the poem, draws you in. Hers is set amongst enclosed walls, that are often closed to the outside world,that many people are unable to witness unless they have been unfortunate to have spent some time waiting for miracles, diving for stones,an almost invisible world that Gillian Clarke brings to life, providing a rare glimpse of an often private hidden world,  while the Wordsworth (the opening quote) poem which she returns to, looks outside for inspiration. I think it has much power and depth, and I find it very moving. I hope you enjoy.
       
                                                       Miracle on St David's Day
                        
                              They flash upon that inward eye
                               Which is the bliss of solitude
                              - The Daffodils - William Worsworth  

An afternoon yellow and open-mouthed
with daffodils. The sun treads the path
among cedars and enormous oaks.
It might be a country house, guests strolling,
the rumps of gardeners between nursery shrubs.   

I am reading poetry to the insane.
An old woman, interrupting, offers
as many buckets of coals as I need.
A beautiful chestnut-haired boy listens
entirely absorbed. A schizophrenic      

on a good day, they tell me later.
In a cage of first March sun a woman
sits not listening, not seeing, not feeling.
In her neat clothes, the woman is absent.
A big mild man is tenderly led

to his chair. He has never spoken.
His labourer's hands of his knees, he rocks
gently to the rhythyms of the poems.
I read to their prescences, absences,
to the big, dumb labouring man as he rocks.

He is suddenly standing, silently,
huge and mild, but I feel afraid. Like slow
movement of spring water or the first bird
of the year in the breaking darkness,
the labourer's voice recites The Daffodils'.


The nurses are frozen, alert; the patients
seem to listen. He is hoarse but word-perfect.
Outside the daffodils are still as wax,
a thousand, ten thousand, their syllables
unspoken, their creams and yellows still.

Forty years ago, in a Valleys school,
the class recited poetry by rote.
Since the dumbness of misery fell
he has remembered there was a music
of speech and that once he had something to say.

When he's done, before the applause, we observe
the flowers' silence. A thrush sings
and the daffodils are aflame.

Reprinted from :-
Gillian Clarke:Collected Poems
Carcanet 1997
Originally from 
'Letter from a far Country; 1982

Happy St Davids Day/

Dydd Gwyl Dewi

heddwch/peace

Hungry for Freedom

'Donate a Poem for Freedom' is a fundraising campaign for Freedom Bookshop after the firebombing 1/2/13. If you are a poet/know a poet  who would like to contribute, here is a link to the facebook page.
https://www.facebook.com/DonateAPoemForFreedom
The collection will be published via LULU and proceeds will go to Freedom Bookshop.
Submission  topics: freedom, liberty,oppression free speech.
Deadline: 1st March
The following is one of my own contributions.

Hungry for Freedom

So long as a human being thirsts for freedom
and is shackled in a concrete cage
without charge under a policy universally condemned
called administrative detention
I will sound alarms.

and if my poetry drifts towards polemic
I will make no apology
with the absence of the unseen in mainstream news
I will spread their dreams and hopes.

So long as bulldozers
destroy peoples homes
and walls are built that divide and uproot
I will raise my voice.

and when peoples lands are stolen
daily from under their feet
I will not be cowed into silence.

When rules of law are twisted
that allow voices to be unheard
I will not feign blindness
pretend ignorance
I will try to be an echoe.

and if some are allowed
to steal the richness
from peoples souls
I will stand up
and stamp my feet.

and will proudly raise my fist
proudly raise my fist.

Lawrence Ferlinghetti( b.24/3/19) - Poetry as Insurgent Art

Lawrence Ferlinghetti I consider to be  one of my favorite poets, a legend who in 1953, founded the City Lights bookstore.A prominent voice of the wide-open poetry movement that began in the 1950s, he has written poetry, translation, fiction, theater, art criticism, film narration and essays. Often concerned with politics and social issues. His work countered the literary elites definition of art and the artists role in the world. Though  imbued with the commonplace, his poetry cannot be simply described as polemic  or personal protest, for  it stands  on his craftmanship, thematics and grounding in tradition. Born in Yonkers, New York in 1919 , an activist whose beats still goes on, still brave enough and daring to challenge peoples beliefs, a painter too, but still active as a poet 90 plus years young. His life  has seen him act as a catalyst for numerous literary careers and for the Beat movement itself, publishing the eaerly work of Allen Ginsberg, Kerouac and Gary Snyder.
Making poetry accessible to all, with his lucid views he has long watered my senses. His bookstore quickly became an iconic literary institution that  has embodied social change and literary freedom. A truly remarkable person, and a great inspiration.
What follows is what   I would regard as his tour de force,although a work in progress, it is a a fine poetic manifesto nontheless, that  proves he's still got the edge, still got the force.His innovative poetics incorporate slang, pop cultural references wry humour to examine the human condition. Here he  shows us his purpose, I guess its up to us to do it ourselves.

I am signalling you through the flames.

The North Pole is not where it used to be.

Manifest Destiny is no longer manifest.

Civilisation self-destructs.

Nemesis is knocking at the door.

What are poets for, in such an age?
What is the use of poetry?

The state of the world calls out for poetry to save it.

If you would be a poet, create works capable of answering the challenge of apocalyptic times,
even if this meaning sounds apocalyptic.

You are Whitman, you are Poe, you are Mark Twain, you are Emily Dickinson and Edna St. Vincent Millay,
you are Neruda and Mayakovsky and Pasolini,
you are an American or an non-American, you can conquer the conquerer with words.

If you would be a poet, write living newspapers.
Be a reporter from outer space,
filing dispatches to some supreme managing editor 
who believes in full disclosure,
and has a low tolerance for bullshit.

If you would be a poet, experiment with all manner of poetic, erotic broken grammers,
ecstatc religions, heathen outpourings speaking in tongues,
bombast public speech, automatic scribblings, surrealist sensings,
streams of consiousness, found sounds, rants and raves-
to create your own limbie, your own underlying, your ur voice.

If you call yourself a poet, don't just sit there.
Poetry is not a sedentary occupation, not a "take your seat" practice.
Stand up and let them have it.

If you would be a poet, invent a new language, anyone could understand.
If you would be a poet, speak new truths that the world can't deny.

Through art, create order out of the chaos of the living.

Make it new news.

Write beyond time.

Reinvent the idea of beauty.

Question everything and everyone, including Socrates who questioned everything.

Be subversive, constantly questioning reality and the status quo.

Strive to change the world in such a way that there's no further need to be a dissident.

Hip Hop and Rap your way to liberation.

Your poems must be more than want adds for broken hearts.

Words can save you where guns can't.

Give a voice to the tongueless street.

See the rose through world-clored glasses.

Be an eye among the blind.

Be naive, non-cynical, as if you had just landed on earth,
astonshed by what tou have fallen upon.

Dig folk singers who are the true
singing poets of yesterday and today.

Think subjectively, write objectively.

Like a field of sunflowers, a poem should not have to be explained.

Haunt bookstores.

Cultivate dissidence and critical thinking.
First though may be worst thought.

Sow your poems with the salt of the earth.

Don't ever believe poetry is irrelevant in dark times.

Make new wine out of the grapes of wrath.

Be the gadfly of the state and also its firefly.

Poetry is making something out of nothing, and can be about nothing and still mean something.

from Poetry as  Insurgent Art
New Directions Press 2007

http://www.citylights.com/book/?GCOI=87286100900740&fa=author&person_id=4854