Have we learnt the lessons of 1936? In July 1936, Spain was plunged into a bloody civil war after a faction of the Spanish Army attempted to topple the democratically elected Republican government. The Republic was defeated and a fascist autocracy led by General Franco ran Spain until 1973.
A number of mostly socialist and communist volunteers from around 50 countries joined the Soviet-backed International Brigades to fight against the Nationalist forces. This anthology includes poems composed by British Brigader poets, together with interspersed with poems from some contemporary poets about the conflict.
The Rose Held In The Teeth: an anthology marking the 90th anniversary of the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, selected and edited by Alan McGuire and Alan Morrison, ISBN 978-1-918132-10-6, 84 pps., £10.
To celebrate 10 years’ work by Culture Matters, we’ve put together an anthology of all the books we’ve published. Here you will find samples of beautifully written poetry and prose, extracts from around 100 books by working-class women and men on a wide range of compelling issues, past and present— work, war, inequality, poverty, austerity, climate change, solidarity, hope and resilience.
Building Jerusalem: A Culture Matters Sampler 2016/2026, ISBN 978-1-912710-89-8, £15.
The poems in Roger Cornish’s Mother Pit are hewn from twenty-three years working at the coalface, from 1974 until the last of Leicestershire’s three pits closed in 1997. These are empirical poems about fellow labourers and craftsmen, managers and deputies, accidents, and the heavy, dirty machinery of coal mining.
Mother Pit: Poems from Under the Ground, by Roger Cornish, ISBN 9781918132069, £10.
The Lucky Last at the Terminal of the Dead is a spectral ghost train ride through the intestinal tract of Strike, Austerity, Covid and Gaza. 26 years into the 21st Century we drown in poverty, decay, dissolution, and complicity in genocide. We kill hope, our elders, our poets and prophets, replacing them with tinpot tyrants, self-serving spivs and murderous maniacs.
The Lucky Last at the Terminal of the Dead does not ask us to mourn but to fight; it does not ask us to forget but to bear witness. Ultimately, it asks us what it is to be human as the graves fill.
The Lucky Last at the Terminal of the Dead by James O'Brien, 50pps., ISBN 9781912710010, £10.
'Peaceweavers' weaves together a mixture of essays, interviews, quotations, poetry and artwork from contributors across the world, together wuth a Foreword by Rowan Williams. Together they create a harmonious choir of voices and images about peaceweaving - about how we can nurture cultures of peace, justice, co-operative interdependence and purposeful collaborative labour.
Peaceweavers: An Anthology of International Radical Writing About Peace, edited by Rebecca Lowe, 280pps, 44 illustrations, ISBN 9781912710706, £14 p. and p. to UK addresses, £19 p. and p. to EU addresses, £22 p. and p. everywhere else.
Words Aloud is Michael Rosen's follow-up to Words United. In it are around 40 new poems covering various themes including Michael's family and childhood in one of London's Jewish communities; education; and politics. It's a beautiful mix of the personal and the political, illustrated by several photographs of Michael and his family.
Words Aloud by Michael Rosen, ISBN 978-1-912710-17-1, 100pps., £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.
A collection of poems to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the 1926 General Strike, covering the Strike itself and also other strikes, struggles and protests by our class since then.
They show how working people, by standing shoulder to shoulder, can fight back against oppression and exploitation and create a better world for everyone.
ISBN: 978-1-918132-05-2, 92pps., £12 inc. p. and p. for UK addresses.
In this compelling collection, Paul Brookes takes you to the ordinary spaces where lives intersect—shop floors, queues, fleeting conversations—and reveals the deep currents of humanity running beneath them. The poems, rooted in the disquiet of pandemic-era experience, are marked by a patient wisdom and tenderness: an understanding that truth often resides not in grand gestures, but in the smallest exchanges—a damaged loaf, a nervous question, a moment of distance or closeness.
ISBN: 978-1-918132-02-1, 82 pps., £10 inc. p. and p.
'Snollygosters' - shrewd, unprincipled persons like Trump, Starmer and Netanyahu - have dragged politics into the mire of illegal wars and genocide. Norris deploys scatological imagery and technical brilliance in metre and rhyme, illustrated by Martin Gollan's satirical cartoons. They forcefully make the point that the Labour Party is at the point of extinction without a radical return to socialism.
ISBN: 978-1-912710-38-6, 6 colour illustrations, 113 pps, £12 inc. p. and p.
From the Rhondda to the Black Country this exceptionally evocative poetry of two places reminds us of the working conditions our ancestors endured, of the industrial disasters that blighted lives, and the importance of kinship and community. Highly relevant and highly readable.
ISBN: 978-1-918132-04-5, 40pps., £10 inc. p. and p.
These poems confront a loss: the fading dream of a collective bright future that once sustained working-class life. They evoke quiet resilience and solidarity, lingering in the after-hours of a broken and beleagured country that still has the capacity to remake itself.
ISBN: 9781912710997, 68pps., 10 colour images, £12 inc. p. and p. for UK addresses, £12 plus £5 p. and p. for worldwide addresses.
In a series of deeply empathic, figurative vignettes, Price bears distant witness to some of the countless harrowing episodes in the genocide visited on Gaza by Israel's far right regime over the past two years.
ISBN 978-1-912710-98-0, 24pps, £8 inc. p. and p.
This is Mike Jenkins' latest collection of direct and visceral verse from the Valleys, with anguished poems of witness to the ongoing ethnic cleansing by Israel in Gaza; poems exploring history, protest and rebellion in Cymru, Ireland and across the world; and poems from the margins of society, from the broken, the downtrodden and dispossessed voices of modern times.
ISBN: 978-1-912710-88-1, 64 pps, £10 inc. p. and p.
Shouting in the Tunnel is a collection of explicitly political poems, written to bring us together, to express our anger at poverty and injustice, and to inspire us to action. Itis a vivid commentary on today’s world, but throughout it carries a message of hope.
'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.
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