Edited by Alistair Findlay, Morning Star, £12.50, available here
By Andy Croft
Poetry is in the news a lot these days. We have recently been subjected to celebrity “plagiarism” rows in Scotland and Australia, Tory attacks on the poems displayed in London underground carriages, and the creepy love poems of Robert F Kennedy Jnr.
On the other hand, not many newspapers can be bothered to review new books of poetry any more. And the Morning Star is still the only daily newspaper to regularly publish new poems, often by new and unpublished writers.
Who We Are is a brilliant selection of some of the poems published in these pages between January 2023 and August 2024. Edited by Alistair Findlay, and with forewords by Ben Chacko and Maxine Peake, the book reads like a collection of delicate footnotes to the events of that period, a kind of running commentary on the news and the ideas and forces behind the headlines.
As Findlay puts it, the book is probably “a far more accurate barometer of the zeitgeist of these last 18 months than that registered by the straw polls, voting intentions and self-absorbed chit-chat offered by the tame media punditry that billionaire party donors have bought and paid for.”
Two years is a long time in poetry (Jenny Mitchell’s poem about the death of Ben Zephaniah reminds us that it is, incredibly, now two years since he died). But there is a depressing consistency about the subjects that these poets address — the state of the NHS, Covid, the coronation, Gaza, Grenfell, the refugee crisis, immigration, emigration, war, the West Bank, Trump, Starmer. This is who we are.
There are some famous names here, like Francis Combes (France), Paul Laughlin and Declan Geraghty (Ireland), Dareen Tatour, Mohammed Moussa and Mosab Abu Toha (Palestine), Sarah Howe, Gerda Stevenson, Sarah Wimbush, Jim Greenhalf, Merryn Williams, Mike Jenkins, Kate Fox, Owen Gallagher and Glyn Maxwell.
And — unusually for a poetry anthology — there is not a weak poem in the book. Every poem hits a nerve, notably Rob Walton’s Government Announces New Minister Of Magic, Andrew Nickson’s Reduced to This, Merryn Williams’ The Appalling Silence Of Good People, Louise Machen’s Government Advice, John Newsham’s Al-Shifa Waiting Room and “tomorrow will be great again” by Ambrose Musiyiwa (“just wave the flag / wrap yourself round the flag / kiss the flag // and tomorrow will be great again”).
The book contains some great parodies of Kipling and William Carlos Williams, and a timely rewrite by Jenny Mitchell of Swift’s A Modest Proposal:
“This latest batch of human flesh won’t make the finest
Steaks — more gristle than firm meat. The poor
Are losing weight as benefits are cut, food banks
Emptied out. But numbers have increased so meat’s not scarce.”
Leslie Benzie’s On The Day includes a great description of “Stop the Boats” vigilantes:
“men with heads like Rooster potatoes,
all deep red skins and shallow eyes,
standing on the Kentish shoreline
shaking their fists at those who’ve had the grit
to travel thousands of miles, spanning land and sea,
to escape war, persecution, poverty
shouting ‘Get the fuck back from where you came.’”
While Stephen Taylor offers a fantastically original way of talking about the Starmer government:
“I’ve just watched a film of an octopus
That was washed up by the weather
On a beach in Southern Wales or Devon
And the creature looks befuddled.
The boy and girl who found (and filmed) it
Had a choice. They could have tortured it
With sticks, or returned it gently to the ocean.
Streeting, who is Shadow Health, would have gone
Directly for the eyes. Reeves would have charged
Spectators. Starmer would have told us
How his father was a toolmaker.”
But the book is worth buying just for The Planet is Dying by Jemima Foxtrot:
“The planet is dying and the teenagers know it.
They know there’s no point in their learning
if something’s not done soon.
The planet is dying and it’ll take chips with it,
and mayonnaise.
And trams and promises and contracts
and hospitals and bluebells
and the whole huge sky can’t exist
if there’s no-one there to look up at it.
The planet is dying and it’ll take pro-life activists
and white supremacists with it.
So it’s not all bad.”
Definitely recommended. It is a long time since John Rety’s Well Versed: Poems from the Morning Star. An anthology like this of poems from the paper should become an annual event.
Andy Croft was the poetry editor of the Star from 2004-2022. Who We Are can be purchased from the Morning Star shop. A launch event for Who We Are will be held at Mono, Glasgow, on January 21 2026.
