Has any one else been inspired to write some!

I have never been an anarchist, but when application of the rule of law is so poor, democracy's pretensions to offer fairness or progress is easily dismissed as nothing more than the rabidly optimistic dreams of a crazed fantasist!

eat the rich, free the poor- shit in the pope's big hat.

Yup, I have been, but not set anything down yet. I consider myself to have an anarchic sensibility (anarchic in the true sense of the word and not the usually-presented derogatory sense), and the recent protests have actually moved me to tears of pride and joy.

Viva le revolution, brutha

I'll have to give that a try, Tommy.
I used to shit in women's handbags as a rather niche fetish but I've passed that now.

Here's my protest poem:

I can't believe you did that.

And wouldn't it be more effective -- immediate -- as a protest to turd in the pope's little hat?

No - it would splat more if it dropped from a greater height.

Have you noticed how the talk ends up with shite on every discussion thread - except the poetry beat thingie - which is really shite - I like the irony in that!

I think I just wrote a poem of protest actually. Its looks a bit like one. The blog poems whizz by like trains in the rush hour. Its down the line somewhere by now. You are right about these threads Isobel. Maybe they are just musement for bored people. Perhaps someone should protest in a poem.

Certainly people seem to be more bothered about being comedic than rational or intelligent!

I wasn't complaining about the toilet humour actually :) I still have a schoolgirl sense of humour and yes these threads do relieve the boredom for me - particularly if you can have a laugh on them. Sometimes it is possible to do comedic and intelligent - or witty even...

Would agree with you about blogs rushing past like trains Freda - it becomes impossible to comment on many and easy to miss them altogether. Not sure if there are any easy answers.

So being serious for a moment, which of your poems makes the most protest Mark - you should post a link. I must confess to being not too political with my poetry - I like to escape from the realities of life in my art. You may like to read the work of Chris Jam on here - he is a great performance poet and makes lots of political and social commentary. Hopefully he won't have wiped his blogged poems - plenty of more successful poets seem to do that...

Dear Mark Mr T Thompson and Freda, just to reassure you -- I am neither comedic at the expense of being either rational or intelligent, nor am I bored.

I thank you.

I ought to add that if you persist with your mistaken 'appraisals' I may well be forced to write a poem in protest -- perhaps even several of them.

My thanks to you.

My dearest Moxy, please do write the poem. I honestly hope it is a little easier to decode than you previous comment.

For this thread, toilet humour, related to protest, seems appropriate to me!

Hello Mark Mr T Thompson, decode is not a river in Egypt, as Mark Twain so famously said. Decodeine is an ingredient in cough remedies, he so famously added.

I shall attempt a protest poem: it won't have toilet humour in it I'm afraid. My comment on this thread was just a technical question concerning effectiveness. Logic is my middle name. Give me facts is the name of my llama. Encylopopeyedeya is my favourite tinned vegetable.

Here's hoping for agitation inspiration....

TTFN Moxy

Technically it was missing at least one mark to be a question.

?

:)

Um, it did!

'And wouldn't it be more effective -- immediate -- as a protest to turd in the pope's little hat?'

There it is.

:D

Mark, were you thinking of protest on a world wide scale or just within the UK? If within the UK, does the protest have to be against the government or can it be against society in general or the media or something similarly powerful?

There is a lot to protest about in the UK but we still have plenty to be grateful for compared with other countries where, to compound deprivation, there are various kinds of tyranny.

protest poem about something that happened in Iran recently -

http://www.writeoutloud.net/public/blogentry.php?blogentryid=17602

No Dave protest in its many forms. I tend to protest about the things that affect or can be affected by me. One of the things we have to be grateful for is the right to protest (poetically or otherwise)!

Is it not the case that there are two kinds of protest? Protest about things that affect the protesters, and protest about things that have little or no effect on the protesters. Examples of the latter - My generation protesting about the US involvement in Vietnam. Also, the biggest demo in Britain being against the Iraq war, which only those with friends or family in the forces would be directly affected by.

To me, these kind of selfless protests usually carry more moral weight than the first kind. That doesn't necessarily make the first kind selfish - many of the protesting students for instance, are clearly thoughtful about the effect on future generations and the big picture for education. But (sweeping generalisation) the selfless kind does tend to inspire more and better poetry. One exception might concern threats to something that is deeply valued (e.g. the miner's strike and the threats to many community's way of life). But on the whole I think it's true. Though someone will no doubt disagree.

If it is true, why is it the case that it is difficult to write good poetry about something which threatens one's self-interest?

I agree, Dave, I think the most potent and profound protests are altruistic.

I've always thought poetry was not particularly suited to protest. Protest is important --often essential -- but music seems more potent and apt for this. Poetry is terrific for opening up ideas and emotions but does so on an individual and usually contemplative basis. Poetry that crosses into rhetoric (which can rouse the crowds to action) ceases to have poetry's essential unnerving otherness and so ceases (in my opinion) to be poetry.

Oooer missus.

I agree with all of this Moxy - except perhaps the last statement. It seems a bit extreme to say a rhetorical rabble-rousing poem isn't a poem at all. But that's nit-picking.

We are, of course, in the age of the image. News broadcasts are built around available images. The images shape what is delivered. The most powerful protests of all are sometimes completely free of words - going right back to the picture of the crying, naked girl walking along in Vietnam.

The result is that the use of images to tug heartstrings and mould opinions has become a science. Poetry is imo still usually more honest than all of that

Fifty years of American dominance,
A fly in the ointment
of human provenance
Consequential to our life and time,
but not to mankind’s meter or rhyme.

The history of man is undulation,
the ascent of society and depreciation,
Cyrus the great in the cradle of man,

now just deplored as the state of Iran.

Interestingly I would argue current University students are altruistic as they are not directly affected by the current proposed changes, where as the Iraq war cost us millions and increased the risk of terror attacks in the UK.

I would also argue that is the search for 'otherness' that could be seen the as having pushed poetry into cultural back water in comparison to forms like music.

Quote Moxy
I've always thought poetry was not particularly suited to protest.
Unquote

Wilfred Owen anyone?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/nov/09/wilfred-owen-dulce-decorum

Er all the war poets of the great war?????

The modern view of war and particularly of the great war, was enormously informed and influenced by the poetry of the time.

Also what about the war poets that emerged in the US in relation to Vietnam?

How about this rather famous poem by Kipling

http://faxmentis.org/html/kipling.html


Poetry not suited to protest?

Seems a nonsense to me-

I must protest! Hehe j/k

Also let's not forget that protest comes in many forms and covers many subjects.

Poetry like the novel is not just one thing, it is a very broad church, and protest is just one of its aspects.

Ah, but it's 'otherness' in the sense of the 'eery and uncanny' not as a sort of knowing outsider. Otherness -- as in a conscious alternative/outsider's perspective for the sake of it has damaged poetry to some extent, you're quite right. Great music has something eery about it, something you can't quite define but you certainly feel it -- as the greatest poetry does.

Yes, the students are acting out of altruism and ideals, which is heartening and terrific.The same could be said of Anonymous, too, in their concerted protest against secrecy and for the right to know and transparent governance. Exhilarating times we live in!

Wilfred Owen and the Great War Poets? No, I would certainly not call them protest poems, or protest poets, per se. It's very much about pigeonholing here, I think -- Chris, you feel they are protesting, I feel they are writing from the greatest sense of personal despondency and their poems are their attempts to come to terms with the horrors they have experienced, a need to understand what has happened, a need shared by their readers -- a need to lament. It all boils down to what you believe poetry is and how it behaves in the readers' hearts and minds and lives. The true protesters then -- in language and art and in my opinion -- were the Da-daists. The whole of Da Daism was born out of protest and reflects the madness of the times. But they didn't create true poetry. Not in my opinion. And, to be honest, I have never found a protest poem that I felt worked as a poem. Never.

What an interesting discussion. Hope it doesn't stop here.

Well, if we're not having Wilfred Owen, how about Allen Ginsberg? Or Diane di Prima, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Denise Levertov? Bertolt Brecht? There are lots of protest poets. John G Hall and Stef Pike are two local ones.

And I'm actually half-way between Chris and Moxy on this one - there was an element of protest about the war poets, though it wasn't their only aspect. You can see it in Sassoon, for instance.

Nah, all the above, so much forced rhubarb and not a stick of poetry in sight :D

Methinks they did protest too much.

If we're having all those poets names above, how about we chuck in some Sonia Sanchez, and Maya Angelou?

I don't believe anyone could say that these two women did not write protest poetry. And it WAS poetry - fierce performance poetry in Sonia Sanchez's case

Sonia Sanchez yes; but Maya Angelou? Hmmm...

Still I rise? Million man march poem?

Protest possibly. Poetry? Pffahhh!

Poetry of protest would certainly include the WW1 poets for me.

Protest can be quiet and personal, or screamed from the barricades, it is still protest.

Sorry Steven, didn't quite catch your logic-based argument there. Have you got some sweeties stuck in your keyboard or something?

Sorry Moxy but just because you claim something does not make it so LOL. You have come up with what you think the war poets were or did..your not wrong in part, but you are creating a fallacious argument.

In effect you are saying the war poets did A and not B and that in this case I am afraid is a false dichotomy :) Many of the great war poets knew that their words were affecting opinion back home and they wanted their words...those true words to reach home and hit home and affect public opinion. And it did affect they way they chose to write.

And that makes it protest poetry whether you like it or not. Or rather an aspect of some of that poetry is protest. The same is evidently true of many of the US poets that wrote of Vietnam.

Also protest poetry is not just war poetry- obviously, rather it encompases many subjects in differing countries and eras.

Protest poety exists whether you like it or not and deciding you don't like it does not invalidate it in any way on an objective level.

We would live in one strange world if one persons like or dislike over something logically invalidated it on an objective level Haha
You can turn your nose up at any person put to you as protest poet or someone who wrote a protest poem (we all can). But that does not unwrite what they wrote, invalidate it, or in any way mean anything other than you didn't like it.

If you wish to be a one man/woman band in terms setting out a criteria for what poetry is that is upto you. I mean you can define what it is in your mind for something to 'be' poetry or rather 'poetry of worth', that is upto you.

Just bare in mind that nobody else is likely to use such criteria or definitions.

We see lots and lots of poems that protest about aspects of modern day life....we have certainly seen this in poetry for the last hundred years. Many of those poems are not altruistic, yet are still poetry and can still be said to work in terms of the fact that they were artistically successful.

P.S

Why do I have a feeling semantics maybe next Hehe

I think I've had my tupence worth...

Rhetoric.

--- My friend, you would not tell with such high zest To children ardent for some desperate glory, The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est Pro patria mori.

Mmmm

Nah no protest their, no didactic message, purely intropective search for otherness.

Or is this not a real poem?

Nice call Chris!

addendum: Woody Guthrie had written on his guitar: 'This machine kills fascists'.

I bet it didn't ... unless he'd had it converted to conceal a shotgun.

addendum: Woody Guthrie had written on his guitar: 'This machine kills fascists'.

Some of the differences of opinion here seem to be arising because terms are undefined. Poetry is almost impossible to define authoritatively (although someone will no doubt try) as opinions vary widely as to what it is and isn't.

But what is protest?
The Oxford Dictionary (10th ed) has a broad definition followed by a narrow one - "A statement or action expressing disapproval of or objection to something.> an organised public demonstration objecting to an official policy or course of action."

It seems to me that some of those commenting above have the broad definition in mind, while others have the narrower definition of a public, targeted action against authority.

Owen's words above fit into both I would suggest.

I put a poem up here a long time back that was recently put into print.

I will put it up again and people can decide for themselves any would-be merit or thought;

At any rate it is a protest...

http://www.writeoutloud.net/public/blogentry.php?blogentryid=17901

"I think it better that at times like these/ the Poet's voice be silent..."
That was one of those WW1 poets, though I forget which now.
Poetry is a way of communicating strong feelings, so seems valid to use it to protest about stuff. Prose is less effective. people use poetic techniques to promote jingoism and to advertise at us, so fair game, I would say.

Presumably for something to be a protest poem, it would have to be written with the intention of protesting. Do we know if Owen's intention was to protest, or to create poetry?
A poetry anthology of Pablo Neruda's has a title (translated) as Songs of Protest.

On the subject of Protest, Nicholas Middleton's painting 'Protest 1st April 2009' is brilliant. A worthy double prizewinner at the John Moores exhibition which can be seen at Liverpool's Walker Art Gallery until Jan 3rd.

http://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/walker/johnmoores/jm2010/prizewinners/middleton.aspx

This new collection (which contains a poem of mine unpublished anywhere else called 'Protest') is a political collection can be bought but is free for download...

http://www.lulu.com/product/paperback/spleen/14265465

Shameless plug but it certainly has some protest bout what I see around me!

http://manorlogz.co.uk/play/Other/Mark_Thompson

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksblog/2010/dec/15/poetry-protest-politics

Back on topic from the Grauniad.

We shall not, we shall not be moved!
Well actually I hope some of YOU are!

http://www.writeoutloud.net/public/blogentry.php?blogentryid=18400