I've been going to open mic evenings for nearly 3 years now and so have heard quite a number of poems with political themes. The majority have contained strong strains of 'fuck the government/system/rich/powerful - none of them have any integrity'. The majority view seems to be that no one with any political power or money is to be trusted and neither is any representative of the system. I heard this kind of thing at a venue last night, yet again, and it set me thinking.

I've never belonged to a political party as an adult but have always been left of centre - way left (and involved) on some issues, not so far on others. Hopefully I don't have to prove that here - those who know me can vouch for it. So in suggesting that saying "Fuck the rich" is not good enough, there's no hidden right wing agenda. I was a tax inspector, and spent many years dealing with the antics of the rich and know just what they can be like.

I appreciate that there is an emotional release in applying expletives to the system, and a good rant can get the room going. But it's never ever intelligent politics because the world is a very very complicated place, and improving it is an increasingly delicate art. There ARE some people of good will within the system. Some of the rich ARE possessed of altruistic impulses. Some politicians (shock horror) do have integrity.

Why cannot our poetry reflect the reality? The current offerings are often poor. Simplistically slagging off the powerful doesn't seem to bring the best out of people poetically.

Any thoughts?

PS posted this without realising Freda had posted almost simultaneously - it's tricky when threads collide like this - can anything be done about it?

I've noticed the same thing at some of the poetry nights that I go to. It's easy to jump on the 'us and them bandwagon' & I've had a few rides myself, writing a couple about how patient-Doctor relationships could be changed by the Health & Social Care Bill & another about making policy that was an amusing exercise in being obtuse.

It's easy to knock things down but rare for people to offer solutions at the same time. I suppose poetry, like stand-up comedy, is adept at drawing attention to whatever it points at without necessarily ever setting out to do any more than that. I'd be interested to read examples which are problem and solution in one. I'm sure they exist.

There is room for barbed wit but I dismiss the "f" and "c" words as adding nothing. I'm not sure if it was you, Dave, (or someone elsewhere)who heartily disliked Alexander Pope, but the latter was top of the game...read his riposte to an insult from the aristocratic Lord Hervey:
"Let me flap this bug with gilded wings,
This painted child of dirt that stinks and stings,
Yet wit ne'er tastes, and beauty ne'er enjoys.
Eternal smiles his emptiness betray,
As shallow streams run dimpling all the way.
Whether in florid impotence he speaks,
And, as the prompter breathes, the puppet squeaks;
Or at the ear of Eve, familiar toad,
Half-froth, half-venom, spits himself abroad".
That is STRONG stuff and a memorable 2-fingers when
one considers the power and position of the aristocracy
in those days.
I wrote some lines on John Prescott after his bout of fisticuffs, which I will try to find - but they ain't a patch on Mr Pope's put-down!

It is useful to bear in mind that
those in public life use ever more
restrained language when being
offensive in the knowledge that its
superficial courtesy will be accurately interpreted by those
well versed in the duplicity of
language. They would be likely to disregard those who wallow in profanity as not worth attending to.

I don't in the least mind you posting at the same time as me Dave. My post was verging on the ridiculous but I was just panicking because everybody had gone quiet.
My poem about tax evasion was, though I say it myself, not full of rant or swearing and mostly consisted of what should be done about it, but did end on a rather sombre note. I put it on the blog at the time Julian started a discussion thread about political poetry.
There is a real 'us' and 'them, but poets are mostly of the middle class (I include myself) and so find themselves pulled between the traditional role of buffering the rich from the criticism of the poor, and leading the revolution. Of course a great many poets come from working class origins and lives, and I do not see classes as inferior or superior to each other so please don't think I am putting anyone down. The role of poet can be to voice the concerns of people like yourself, however you identify, or can be to help draw a veil of obfuscation over the reality of exploitation, to pacify the exploited and to please the rich.
Well thats my humble opinion, anyway.

I agree that this is a difficult one Dave. Most "ranty" poetry seems to go over the heads of people; a sharp outpouring of venom and invective that misses the target and is lost in the background cacophony. However, writers, even those of the rant persuasion, ought not to be put off by this; sometimes it is just sheer weight of numbers that gets the message across.

Like you I've never nailed my politics to the party mast, but I have been an active trade union convenor for the past thirty years. This experience has demonstrated that successive governments, backed by corporate interests (financial and influential) have sought to "re-brand" and spin what ought not to be tolerated in society. This has led to a bleeding of party lines and a homogenised political system, where the difference in policy is negligible and centre politics are all that is realistically available to today's voter. If any party or party figure steps outside this self-enforced cordon there is a rush of press and commentary to shoot them down.

I'm not sure I can agree with all your sentiments re altruism/integrity; yes some still remains, but very few and far between. Politicians these days often seem scared to call a thing by what it is, the recent "work experience" scheme being a case in point. On the surface this seems to be a a creative device to enable those out of work to gain skills. When probed a little more deeply, quite frankly the scheme is flawed on so many levels. How much experience does one need to stack shelves? Why does the hard-won minimum wage not apply, as it would in any other employment? Why are we copying the US model of interns - basically unpaid assistants? Why aren't these "real" jobs if the work is there to be done? But perhaps, most importantly why is the taxpayer footing the bill for Tesco (one of our largest and most profitable corporations) to take on unpaid labour? The essence of the fiasco for me is the fact that we, as UK taxpayers, are paying people to work for private companies. That used to be called Government subsidy, but I've not heard one politician brave enough to call a spade a spade.

The way our society works has lurched so far to the right in recent years that to suggest any left-wing policies or solutions is akin to blasphemy. This has not been helped by a predominantly right-wing press drip-feeding its readership with the subtle "greed is good" of the Gordon Gecko generation.

What concern me most is what happens when the hoodwinked and duped population wake up to the reality that society is run for the benefit of the few at the expense of the many. What has happened in Egypt, Libya Tunisia etc has happened for the same reasons there is political apathy in the UK. Apathy is a dangerous state of affairs and a balance that is easily tipped. Low voter turnout signals this apathy - the belief that whoever we vote for it won't make any difference. When that faith in democratic mechanisms of change is eroded where, or to what, do the disenfranchised turn to have their views and concerns heard?

But it couldn't happen here could it?

I seem to recall a chap called "Cromwell" I think it was . . .

A deep and often divisive topic.I'm not sure about the press and its attitudes. For years, the press has swayed to and fro in its political stance. I recall the old Daily Express having its St George fettered or unfettered according to how it viewed the government policies of the day. Tony Blair's New Labour Party came to power on the back of Major's Conservative administration for a variety of reasons but Blair knew enough to realise that anything too "left-of-centre" was anathema to the British people at large and, to an extent, he stole the Emperor's clothes. He was successful, but like all long-term leaders, he over-stepped his mark and had to go. Then came Brown,that plunderer of our gold reserves and pillager of the most admired and envied pensions system anywhere - and for what purpose...as if we didn't know. Someone has said that we need a benevolent dictatorship in an increasingly dissatisfied and fragmented society - step forward a modern Cromwell. But the bottom line is that we have become an avaricious, jealous, materially dominated society increasingly influenced by outside interests but without the confidence or political support needed to fight our own corner in this cliche riven - and here's one: "global" - world. Definitions of poverty are far from the actual reality of the word in today's western societies and envy and spite are the order of the day. I once wrote to my MP suggesting that Parliament should worry more about a disenfranchised middle class than anything else. I still have the belief that when they are marginalised beyond acceptance - already creeping that way - then trouble will be very real indeed. They are the weather-vane which shows which way the wind is blowing, fair wind or foul!

I think the problem with political poetry is that (despite the almost universal disappearance of anything like real poverty in the west) it always gets itself stuck on `who is getting what` or who is paying for it.

Poetry should be about larger issues than mere economics.

For instance: What does the recent proposal to allow same sex partners to legally call their relationships a marriage say to the millions of heterosexual couples who `plight their troth` every year?...nothing at all?

I'm afraid nearly all the political poems posted on here just don't do it for me. For me they rank alongside poems about poetry; worse still, poems about not being inspired to write poetry.
The essential cross political poetry has to bear is this. I can read/hear a poem about a rose, a cat, a dog, a thought, a place, an emotion etc and I weigh it as a poem. It is universal. Any political poem necessarily enamours and alienates half its readership. It is not universal; it is partisan. So I get distracted from its poetic merit.
For me a political poem is like Marmite and Manchester United - you either love it or you hate it.
Also they're dead twee and naive.
Sniff that!

I thought I'd write a poem
About Manchester and marmite.
Just like our party leaders
You love 'em or you don't, right?

How can our elected MPs
Really be altruistic
With their fingers in a gravy boat
And expense sheet so elastic?

Why can't they be the same as us -
Low wages and high debts,
Short holidays, no second homes,
no Duck house, no regrets.

They moan that they're away from home
Armed Forces face that daily!
While we commuters slog it out
On foot, bus, car and railway.

They sometimes represent a zone
They never may have seen.
I think they should be born there
( Like the Yorkshire cricket team).

And if they fail to keep their word
Or their morals are not sound
They should lose their high positions
As football managers have found.

You too can be an MP
if your heart's sincere and true
But if you ever let us down,
Then that's the end of you!

I never got to mention
Manchester, my dear home town
because I fear the PC police
Will come and hunt me down.
For Personchester's now the name
That Politik dictates
And I can't make my own mind up
In our glorious Nanny State.

Stroof, Yvonne! I thought I was up late posting my posty-thing; but you were 2 hours later!

i never got the hang of telling the time - too busy telling tall tales, John.

Lots of in-depth chatting there. I like the poem by Yvonne. It seems to point at more than what is wrong, indeed there is an incling of what can be done if the 'politians' don't measure up to the responsiblity of looking after us.

Now let's wipe our noses, dust off our pens and put ink on parchment for parliament. Go on then !!!

I am making policy

It is framed by the evolving landscape that we find ourselves in today,
I have been using a blue sky thinking group
To helicopter above day-to-day issues
And perform a radical re-boot.

I am making policy,
It's about quantitative easing,
It's about sustainable growth in childhood obesity,
Using industry-led initiatives funded by the taxpayer,
Feed-in tariffs,
And voluntary regulation.

I am making policy,
It's about using green incentives
To reduce teenage pregnancy,
It's about ring-fencing moral values
Using riot police,
I have produced a road map to deliver transition:
I have a plan for every family to drive down the information superhighway,
With all the windows blacked out.

The piggybank is empty,
But I am making policy:
It's about rebalancing the economy;
It's about flexible dynamic optimisation of resource allocation;
It's about finding pennies down the back of your sofa,
And reallocating them,
By removing your sofa.
I have a plan for the progression to a low carbon economy,
By writing 'low carbon',
In front of 'economy'.

I am making policy,
It's about jump starting recovery
Using a defibrillator powered by cheap clean renewable energy,
It's about stimulating the local economy
By talking dirty with economists,
And creating free enterprise zones,
So called because they cost nothing,
And you have to be enterprising
To get out of them.

I am making policy,
It's about societal standards,
It's all about respect,
It's far better than their policy;
They who are no more than feckless animals,
Wallowing in their own ordure,
They who would throw us all to the wolves should they have their way.
It's about making a balanced decision,
The right choice.

I am making policy,
We are by no means down and out;
We are moving forward,
It's about us all progressing up the skills escalator together,
Whilst standing on the right to allow others to pass.
It's about advancing up the competency scale,
Whilst avoiding eye contact with descending bum notes,
Because they're not really there;
All the escalators go up,
So we couldn't see them coming down anyway.

I am making policy,
It's about inclusivity,
It's about consultation,
It’s about 360° feedback,
It's about conferring with the foremost experts
And then ignoring them,
It's about running as fast as you can down a tunnel with your hands over your ears,
For a minimum period of 16 weeks,
As prescribed by best practice guidance.

I am making policy,
I have a rough skeletal model of where I see the various synergetic nodes,
It's all about transparency,
I've been told that I'm too honest,
By people that don't know the truth.
I have been working late at night;
It's about dining with newspaper executives,
It’s about facilitating proactive resolution of preventable incidents,
It's about potentially harmful information that it is not in the public interest to disclose,
It's about safeguarding the country's interests, our interests, my interests.
It's about me sleeping with my wife's sister
And claiming stays at the Ritz on expenses.

I am making policy,
I am acting as a central resource for organisational change,
I have been cutting out the pieces of the budget deficit jigsaw,
It's about decentralisation
Of targets,
It's about transferring responsibility whilst retaining power,
It's about keeping voters on-side,
I like to balance on a seesaw;
It's about exercising control.

I am making policy,
It is coming to a smooth fruition:
I am riding a seesaw robustly,
Dressed as Widow Twanky,
Wearing ear defenders.
Are you still following me?
I am making policy,
It's about you,
It's about what you can do,
What's written down here,
And what isn't.

Jim Stewart-Evans has my vote. It's all just a pantomime anyway.

Just placed a political poem on the site. It’s not aimed at any party, but politics in general.

Well done Jim Stewart Evans for a sustainable low carbon green and infinitely renewable political balancing act of a poem.

You need to come and listen to my work.

On profanity and politics:

''If I can't say 'fuck', then I can't say 'fuck the government!' Lenny Bruce

''Abusive language and swearing are a legacy of slavery, humiliation, and disrespect for human dignity, one’s own and that of other people''.
Leon Trotsky (The Struggle for Cultured Speech, 1923)

I passionately agree to BOTH of the above statements.

I am certainly an occasional ranter, of the generally non sweary variety. Sometimes the work of the poet is about expressing a sentiment with a broad if not universally shared nature, which doesn't always lend itself to finding solutions, if indeed such things exist!

The fact is there are firstly, more poor people and secondly more things (or absences of things) for them to upset about.

Verse is an effective medium of communication when compared to prose (I love the Coleridge definition of prose being words in their best order and poetry being the best words in their best order - where best for me is defined as both most accurate and effective).

The ranting is about expressing emotion, what could be more apt for poetry than that? Excessive profanity, like excessive anything decreases effectiveness, so I avoid it.

Loving the other comments in this thread, but on the suggestion that a lot of political poetry is trite, so is a lot of the rest!

Sledgehammer politics rarely makes a good subject for a poem... but I don't ask if something is polemical or political, but was i moved in some way. Sometimes expletives work, sometimes not. Sometimes the surprise of who's saying it is the shock.... like Pam Ayres using 'fuck'...

There's loads of quality poems speaking truth to power but its not an easy form to do well. I've farted out some absolute garbage on the subjectof political poesy but it can be done. Just not well by me in particular

I can see the merits in the argument that politicians can be inherently good, and also in Harry's opinion that political poetry should rise itself above issues such as economics.

But on the other hand, the 'political poetry' on trial here can be viewed universally as poetry that attaches itself to a strong idea or a worthy cause of some sort, pitted against another. This construct could also apply to war, a subject with a long and rich poetic history. Also, although there are undoubtedly poems that could be written based on the deeper ideas of politics (such as the human element, the pressures of working within a political system etc.), there is the trouble that these can often be presented as abstract or speculative, with a lack of passion in conveying the idea involved through lack of personal experience, unless of course it's something personal, e.g. a love letter to a local MP for their hard work and care for those in their constituency.

In terms of acting as a vehicle for the poet to express themselves explicitly against the state, the political poem will very seldom stray from these lines.

Sometimes "politics" just arises out of one's subject position. I heard a Labi Siffre reading criticised as "irrelevant to me" because "all of his poems were about homosexuality". I looked at the poems and I was puzzled. The issues, the feelings, the paradoxes etc. were universal but sometimes the gender when specified included addresses to men. I was especially interested because one of the things I like to do in my poems is to confound gender expectations or practice forms of gender discombobulation that might get people to think outside their own subject position. Odd, but when I read Keats or listen to poems at open mics, I have never thought, 'oh that's a heterosexual poem and of no relevance to me'.

I can´t see how anyone can write poetry without being political, most of my poems reflects on the time we live in