Political Poems

Most of my life I’ve written political poems, whether or not they were wanted. Within the poetry world it was pretty clear that they weren’t, for quite a long tome. Poets stayed above that kinds of stuff, didn’t soil their hands with commitments or points of view - except for odd eccentrics lke Blake, Shelley or Adrian Mitchell. 9/11 changed that a bit, with the War on Terror eating into a lot of lives that didn’t think they had any connection with politics. Then austerity and Brexit convinced a widening audience that actually, poetry might engage with this stuff.

So imagine my delight when Marvin Thompson arrived as guest editor at Poetry Wales. As a Black, Welsh-speaking teacher he’s not exactly standard issue poet, and nor was his pitch. “Send me your villanelles,” he said. “Write me something about Cop 26.” Wow. I’ve always written villanelles, and sestina, and hundreds of sonnets, even while most poets were saying - “Mmm, still using regular forms. That’s quaint.” so here’s the winner of the National Poetry competition urging me to write a villanelle about Cop 26. Who could refuse?

I did write it - and you can find it elsewhere on this website (Conference Call, in “Poems on the News” but the dream is over. Marin has gone, pleading overwork, and so far as I’m concerned his successors don’t want to know about villanelles or Cop 26, let alone a poem that combines the two.