'Airtins' means directions: in these poems, Hershaw re-imagines the moral guidance in Lao Tzu's Tao Te Ching, applying a similar outlook to the modern problems of poverty, inequality and wars. Hershaw uses the vivid, demotic cadences of the Scots language to express a vision of a practical, green and spiritual socialism.
This the fourth book in a series of anthologies of radical poetry from contemporary Wales, protesting and grieving austerity at home and wars abroad. The poems point to the need for a sense of the common good, and solidarity and empathy, rather than neoliberal egoism and greed - we not me, us not I.
Young Roundhead Jared Amory relays the story of his childhood friend, Gideon Wade, who early in the English Revolution deserts the Royalist cause, which he had felt...
In this new collection of poems and images, Sam Kemp vividly memorialises the struggles at 'Fortress Wapping' in 1986, when 5000 print and clerical workers went on strike against Murdoch's News International.
Release the Sausages! is an anthology of poems, with absolutely no poems in it. It is a celebration of the first twelve months of Keir Starmer’s government - a monument to the towering contribution to socialist thought of Sir Keir Starmer KCB QC, and his decisive, principled and unifying part in the proud history of the British Labour Movement. And it is a moving tribute to his moral integrity and irresistible charisma, warmth and wit.
Release the Sausages! is £5 inc. p. and p. for a printed copy, with 20 blank pages for you to write your own poems in praise of Sir Keir.
Words United is a new book of poems, anecdotes and observations, a fleet of word-drones sent to expose the brutal genocide, displacement and mass starvation visited upon the Palestinian people by the Israeli government and the Israeli Defence Force, and the lies, hypocrisy and collusion of most British, US and European governments and politicians, and most of the Western media.
Words United by Michael Rosen, ISBN 978-1-912710-81-2, 120pps., £10 inc. p. and p. for UK addresses, £10 plus £5 p. and p. for worldwide addresses. Please allow 1-2 weeks for delivery - it is also available immediately as an ebook.
All profits from books and ebooks sold will be donated to Medical Aid for Palestine.
Waiting for the Light is a collection of short stories exploring the unexpected moral and ethical uncertainties in almost every human endeavour. They follow the tradition of the cautionary tale, covering themes of morality, horror and the limitless ambiguous ingenuity of humankind.
Waiting for the Light, by D. P. Dingham, ISBN 978-1-912710-66-9, £10 inc. p. and p. for UK addresses, £10 plus £5 p. and p. for worldwide addresses.
£10.00Original price was: £10.00.£5.00Current price is: £5.00.
Thirty poems in various forms and styles—rhyme, blank verse, free verse, villanelle, and ‘villanelle-vague’—tackle the seismic events and vicissitudes of recent years: Brexit, Grenfell and the “hostile environment”, the proroguing of Parliament, Boris Johnson’s shambolic premiership, Covid and the lockdowns, “Partygate”, Trump’s insurrection, the resistible rise of Keir Starmer, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the Platinum Jubilee, the JUST STOP OIL protests, the death of Elizabeth Windsor and the suppression of republican expression during the mourning period, and the Coronation.
In this collection of poems, Spain's troubled past mixes with the everyday routines, sights, sounds and tastes of Alan McGuire’s adopted homeland. Like any keenly observant Briton living in Spain, poet Alan McGuire can see the legacy of the country's civil war all around him.
In a series of imaginative, insightful poems, many of them beautifully illustrated with woodcut drawings by Ignacia Ruiz, Fran Lock explores the developing love between Mary Magdalene and Jesus, its relationship to Jesus' liberating call for personal and political transformation, and the way it continues to challenge, comfort and inspire us with the ‘love that is stronger than death’.
Love Is Stronger Than Death: Mary Magdalene and the Insurrection of Jesus, by Fran Lock, ISBN 978-1-912710-53-9, £10 inc. p. and p. for UK addresses, £10 plus £5 p. and p. for worldwide addresses.
An Anthology in Solidarity with the People of Palestine, ISBN 978191270782
Since the start of the genocidal war by Israel against the Palestinian people, poems have flooded in to Culture Matters. We have published many of them online, to show our solidarity with the Palestinians and the huge numbers of people in Britain and across the world who have marched in protest against the murderous nature and horrifically disproportionate scale of the Israeli offensive. We have marched to the now familiar chant from which this book gets part of its title.
Now that there is a glimmer of hope that peace, however fragile and precarious, is beginning to break out, we have put together another kind of march of solidarity: an anthology of poems from 70 poets. Some are already on the site, but most of them are new poems. They vary in tone, style and message, but are all great examples of successful political poems – skilful and eloquent expressions of protest, anger, sadness, compassion and a burning desire for justice and peace. As Michael Rosen says:
This is poetry in the face of horror. It's a poetry that investigates how it is we live in a world in which there is a shocking contrast: the normality of living here and the beyond-cruel normality of the mass killing in Gaza. While others have stayed silent, it's a poetry that is not afraid to speak.
The book is available as a pdf, We Are All Palestinians. It is free to download, but you are invited to make a donation of £5 via our Support page. A printed book can also be ordered for £12 inc. p. and p. for UK addresses, or £12 plus £4 p. and p. for EU and worldwide addresses. Please pay via the Support page and email us at books@culturematters.org.uk with your address details.
After production costs have been met, all money received will be given to the Medical Aid for Palestinians charity, to help build an effective, sustainable and locally led healthcare system for Palestinians.
Slave Songs and Symphonies is an ambitious, beautifully crafted collection of poems, images and epigraphs. It's about human history, progressive art and music, campaigns for political freedom, social justice and peace. Above all it's about the class and cultural struggle of workers 'by hand and by brain’ to regain control and ownership of the fruits of their labour.
David Betteridge’s poems are leftist, lyrical, and learned, infused with sadness and compassion for the sufferings of our class, the working class. They are also inspired by visionary hope, and a strong belief that our class-divided society and culture can be transformed by radical politics and good art – and by radical art and good politics.
Bob Starrett’s drawings are much more than illustrations. They dance with the poems, commenting on them as well as illustrating them. They are like Goya’s drawings in their dark, ink-black truthfulness and their intimate knowledge of suffering and Blake’s 'mental fight'. Like the poems, they express and resolve the struggles they depict.
Slave Songs and Symphonies tells the story of how slave songs become symphonies – and helps makes it happen. It is not just about class and cultural struggle – it is class and cultural struggle.
I want to change the world, I want to strike the spark or kick the pebble that will start the fire or the avalanche that will change the world a little.
- Fred Voss
Everyone can see the growing inequality, the precarious and low paid nature of employment, the housing crisis in our cities, the divisions and inequalities between social classes, the problems of obesity, drink and drugs, and the sheer everyday struggle to pay the bills for many working people. In this situation, Fred Voss is like a prophet. He is warning us of the consequences of the way we live, he is telling truth to power, and he is inspiring us with a positive vision of a possible – and desirable – socialist future.
- Len McCluskey, General Secretary, Unite the Union
Culture Matters has published a new anthology of poems from the Bread and Roses Poetry Award 2017, sponsored by Unite.
The purpose of the new Award is to encourage poets to focus on themes which are meaningful to workin g class people and communities and to encourage those communities to engage more with poetry. Entrants were given the opportunity to deal broadly with any aspect of working class life and culture and show commitment to the common people, the common good and the common music of poetry.
Mike Quille, the Editor of the anthology, said, “We wanted to encourage Unite members and working people more widely to engage with poetry and the arts generally. And encourage the mainstream poetry world to lift its eyes beyond the narrow poetry ‘bubble’ and be more attentive to the labour movement. The poems in this collection reflect a broad range of themes and moods. They show very clearly the collective strength of writing by working people.”
The Award was kindly supported by Unite, Britain’s biggest trade union. Len McCluskey, General Secretary of Unite, said, “We sponsored the first Bread and Roses Poetry Award because we believe that our members, and working people generally, have an equal right to join in and enjoy all the arts, and other cultural activities. We believe we should be able to afford them, get to them, and enjoy them, and that art should seek to engage with all sections of the community. Working-class people face a continual cultural struggle to defend our cultural commons, to keep cultural activities open to the many, not the few.”
Culture Matters has published a new collection of poetry by Fran Lock. The poems are accompanied by collages by Steev Burgess.
Fran lock is an activist, writer and illustrator, and one of the finest political poets around. Like John Clare, Lock evokes the troubling, often agonising effects of capitalist society on personal and social identity. Her feminist and socialist poetry weaves psychological insight and social awareness into themes of poverty, mental health problems, sexual abuse, domestic violence and political struggle. Vivid, lavish and punchy, it combines a deep sense of anger and injustice with vulnerable empathy and compassion.
The poems in this collection revel in richness and in strangeness. They are about the unlikely places where working class women find beauty and meaning, and the unlikely materials from which they are composed. The fragmented yet coherent collages of Steev Burgess complement and enhance those meanings perfectly. The images dance with the poems, singing together about muses and bruises, fantasy and reality – grind and grime with a lick of glitter.
Culture Matters has published three free ebooks containing essays by the theologian and writer Professor Roland Boer.
Our aim with the topic of religious and spiritual life is the same as our aim across the arts and all other cultural activities - to unearth and mobilise the radical meanings in religious thought, teaching and practice. We believe the intersection of religion and progressive politics is a field which merits serious study, as the intellectual bankruptcy of neoliberalism becomes increasingly obvious to people, reactionary politicians continue to hide behind a socially conservative interpretation of religion, and as recognition of the need for wide-reaching and progressive change in Britain grows.
Culture Matters has published an oustanding new collection of poetry by Martin Hayes.
Martin Hayes is the only British poet who writes consistently and seriously about work, and about the insanity of a society where employees are seen as mere ‘hands’ whose sole role is to make money for the employer.
Alan Dent, a publisher and poet himself, who writes an illuminating introduction, says, “Hayes speaks for those whose lives are supposed to be not worth speaking about. He is intent on revealing the significance of the lives of ordinary people in the workplace. When current employment relations are consigned to the dustbin of history, and are viewed as we now view the feudal relations between lord and vassal, will people wonder why so little was written about it?"
Martin’s poems are direct and simple, and full of black humour. Like the grainy black and white images that illustrate them so well, they expose and express the simple, terrible truth – that the human relation on which our society is based, that between employer and employee, is morally indefensible. The clear message of his poetry is that those who do the work should own, control, and benefit fully from it. They should, in the last words of the last poem, ‘start the revolution that will change everything’, and show that ‘all of our fingertips combined/might just be the fingertips/ that keep us and this Universe/ stitched together’.
Culture Matters is proud to publish a remarkable new long poem by Peter Raynard written to mark the 200th anniversary of Marx’s birth, and the 170th anniversary of the publication of The Communist Manifesto.
Like the Manifesto, it protests the injustice and exploitation which is integral to capitalism, and the growing gap between capitalism’s productive potential and the unequal distribution of its benefits. And like that Manifesto, it is a dynamic and powerful piece of writing – pungent, oppositional and unsettling.
'A highly innovative long poem, loaded with history, radicalism and urgency.'
- Anthony Anaxagorou
‘This poetic coupling is something else. It's a re-appropriation, a reclamation, a making sing. It's bolshie (yes, in every sense), provocative and poignant too. It takes the Manifesto back from all that is dead, dry and terminally obfuscated. It's a reminder of reality, the flesh on the theory. It gives Marx to those of us who need him most. Not just relevant, but urgent. Not just angry, but hopeful."
- Fran Lock
arise! is a new long poem by Paul Summers, which is both a celebration of the past, and an inspiration for the future. The pamphlet was commissioned by Culture Matters for the Durham Miners' Gala this year, and it is sponsored by the Durham Miners' Association.
The poem celebrates the rich heritage and culture of mining communities, which is expressed so vibrantly and colourfully in the marches, the banners, the music and the speeches at the Durham Miners’ Gala. It invokes the collective and co-operative spirit of past generations of men and women who worked and struggled so hard to survive, to build their union, and to organise politically to fight for a better world.
One of the voices rarely heard in modern poetry is that of working-class women, in terms of both the impact of major historical events on their identity, health and happiness, as well as their day-to-day experiences of work, men and motherhood.
In this remarkable, powerful collection, Jane Burn has told her story and more, in a series of poems which are both personal and political. She has also illustrated the poems with a beautifully imaginative series of illustrations, which add depth and detail to the collection.
This is a vital collection for our time. Are things worse than the 80s? Have a read, then decide — you won’t be disappointed. As one of the titles says: these poems are ‘Sentences to Survive In’.
Ruses and Fuses, by Fran Lock with collages by Steev Burgess, is the follow-up collection to Muses and Bruises.
Fran Lock is one of the most prolific and outstanding poets out there today, fighting with her writing. Bristling with multi-bladed language and an anger born of compassion, she takes poetry in directions the mainstream dares not take.
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