Ten radical poems for National Poetry Day
rs21 •Like the song says, socialism is about bread, but also roses. With the help of rs21 members we’ve gathered ten poems about the fight against capitalism, racism and women’s oppression, and our dreams for a better world.
We’ve put them together with images into a short publication. With writers from William Blake to Maya Angelou, we hope there’s something for everyone.
Click on the image below to read the poems.
Let us have your comments – and maybe share your own favourite poems.
5 comments
HELP! I can’t find the poems when I “click on the image below”. =^(
No rs21-ers nibbling on Colin’s challenge to think up some more? The Revolution needs poetry, folks. And poetry needs the Revolution!
Michael, they have done on their fb pages. People don’t use these comment sections enough
Thank you for this collection – I very much enjoyed it. Idris Davies, Welsh coal-miner poet, is most well-known for The Bells of Rhymney, part of a volume called Gwalia Deserta. Another volume – The Angry Summer – captured life during the 1926 General Strike. Here is poem number 27 from The Angry Summer:
“These men went into the gloom
And the danger day by day,
Went down with a curse and a joke
And believed that Britain should be
Greater for all their toil.
And then when the profits were high
And the bags of gold were full,
The men who created the gold
Were told that the time was come
To lower the standards of life
And exist on fewer loaves,
Less meat and butter and cheese.
So out of the grime they came,
Insulted and angry and proud,
Together to march in the sun
With a song and a curse and a vow,
Together to challenge the creed
That blood is baser than gold,
Together to stand to the end,
Together to live or die.”