There seems to be a lot going on in the world, much of it unpleasant. Not that unusual you might think, but the degree of unpleasantness is higher than usual as the USA launch death and destruction on hundreds of people in Iran – many of them ordinary citizens going about their business, including children. While few would pretend that the Iranian regime is a caring or civilised one, raining death down from the skies hardly redresses that balance. Apparently, J D Vance has said that it’s necessary to prevent the craziest and worst regime in the world getting nuclear weapons. I think it may be too late for that.
Meanwhile, back here in the UK we’ve had a by-election won by a strong local candidate and the Green Party. You might have expected the opposing parties to do the normal thing and congratulate the victor, but Nigel Farage has instead made ludicrous claims of a stolen election – straight out of the Trump playbook. The normal suspects in the press have piled in, the Telegraph labelling the Greens as dangerous extremists. Have they read their own recent editions? You might not agree with everything the Greens stand for but dangerous extremists? Hardly. They won for a range of reasons – a good candidate, good communications, an ability to connect and offer something that made sense to the voters. And they were neither of the two main parties, both currently unpopular and, importantly, they were seen as best placed to defeat Reform.
In the midst of all this I took part in a poetry workshop focussing on writing political poetry, a subject in which I take a keen interest. This is partly because I find it difficult to separate the political from the rest of life – I keep going back to an exchange in my play The Door quoted above, in which Corporal Boyd says ‘I’m not interested in politics, me’ and Capt Ryan replies ‘It’s not politics Boyd, it’s life’. It’s also because being a writer gives me a voice and that comes with a responsibility to use it wisely. For me that does not mean proselytising or seeking to persuade but it does mean commenting, speaking truth to power and seeking to provoke thought. The workshop, led by Steve Pottinger who writes insightful and well-crafted poems in this area, certainly helped focus the mind on process, subject matter, and more, while giving an opportunity to benefit from the input of the other participants. I came away encouraged (and with the poem below). Life and politics will continue to creep into my writing.
Regime change
Finding it came easy to criticise
he went ahead and filled his boots
pointing out the parents, daughters and sons
stolen from the streets in the light of day
the people shot down by thugs with guns
for being black, brown, trans, or gay
arguing that the supreme leader
and his gang should be weeded out
being cruel, ruthless, hungry for power
they presented danger there was no doubt
the people starved while the leaders grew fat
and people deserve much better than that
so using his forces he went on the attack
Imagine his shock when the mirror cracked
