Stood Up And Spat

After 10 years we’re done. I started the blog as there was little history of ranting poetry available and I wanted to illuminate this. There’s also been music and politics of the time to give context, and some fun.
In a broader frame there have been many posts about working class writing through history.
I may make the occaissional post as I turn up things of interest, but I won’t be posting regularly as I have over the last decade.
The blog will stay as an archive as I know many people have found it useful.
Thanks to all who’ve contributed, helped, and enjoyed.

Our final image is a collage by Porky the Poet.

The Redskins Split

from Socialist Worker 10th Jan, 1987

Communique – Martin Booth

From Martin Booth’s 1982 pamphlet Missile Summer, which is 8 poems about the outbreak of a nuclear war.

Communique

The bombers lift off, obscene bat
wings spread, their ellies full
as a gourmet banker’s.

Nobody says anything.

The President of the USA lies flat
in a copper hip-bath; around
him the lather bubbles pop.

Nobody says anything.

Ambassadors from England and
France queue to telephone their
ministers; the lines are busy.

Nobody says anything.

Nobody says anything: blown
seeds drift over the runway,
dust settles by the siloes,
the petals of a dogrose
slip from the fading day
and the filaments of death are sewn
in the cloth of the wind.

Martin Booth

Things Gonna Get Greater Later

From The Black Voices: On The Streets in Watts, the 1969 album by the Watts Prophets.

Venceremos

This poem comes from Venceremos vol 1, number 1. This was put out by the Patsy O’Hara Youth Movement, which was the youth wing of the Irish Republican Socialist Party. It is from the height of the hunger strikes, Patsy O’Hara was one of the hunger strikers. He was a member of the Irish National Liberation Army, the armed wing of the IRSP.
There’s also a look at the rioting that was sweeping England that summer.

Crass V Attila

Crass get cross in Sounds, 22 May, 1982.

Moral Stuff

Poem from Cuddon’s Cosmopolitan Review, 28 May, 1965. This was an anarchist literary review published between 1965-67. It was published from Gray’s Inn Road, London.

Moral Stuff

Bum?
Some
Have fun
That way.

Not I
Cock.
Not me
Mate.

Fresh
Phallus
Phrying
Tonite.

Prying
Tonight?
Prying
What?

Bum?
Some
Have fun
That way.

Not I
Cock.
Not me
Mate.

Roger Price

Attila Against Misogyny

From the NME, 16 July, 1983

Attila makes a stand against sexual violence and the NME gets snippy.
There was an on-going row about censorship and violence porn going on in the NME, there was something of a panic about ‘video nasties’ in the early 80s.
Attila addressed this with a poem Video Nazis which appeared in his first collection.

Miners Gigs

Some good folk supporting the miners during the strike in 1984.

Bath Night

Vivian Usherwood, the 12 year old poet who grew up in care in Hackney, from his 1972 collection Poems.

Bath Night

We have baths every two days
I am glad when it is bath night
That is the only time
I have to myself
All the rest of the time:
Noise, noise, noise, noise!
When I go to bed I hear noise
But what can a person do
To stop it?
When they go out I hear noise
I am getting used to it now.

Vivian Usherwood