Monday 7 September 2015

Essay in Berfrois magazine: ‘21 Poems: 21 Reasons For Choosing Jeremy Corbyn’: Why I Put It Together

The U.K. based online magazine Berfrois, who themselves published an E-book of 20 Poems for Corbyn asked me to write for them an essay on why I put together 21 Poems: 21 Reasons for Choosing Jeremy Corbyn. 

A long-time friend and, for his sins, former member of the Yorkshire Regional Executive of the Labour Party came to visit for a few days in early May. He arrived the evening of Wednesday, May 6th, having voted by postal ballot for his local Labour candidate in the UK General Election which of course took place the following day. Our plan was that we would, at the appointed hour – together with my immensely tolerant wife Susan and our altogether less tolerant cat – gather around David Dimbleby, eat and drink to excess, and watch the predicted hung parliament unfold…” read on.
Berfrois's Poems for Corbyn includes poems by Erin Belieu, Ian Birchall, Becky Cherriman, Natalie Chin, Josephine Corcoran, Alec Finlay, Iain Galbraith, Helen Ivory, Andy Jackson, Erik Kennedy, Marion McCready, Nicholas Murray, Pascale Petit, Tom Pickard, Ian Pindar, Michael Rosen, Michael Schmidt, Ernest Schonfield, Nick Telfer and Rory Waterman.

21 Poems: 21 Reasons for Choosing Jeremy Corbyn includes poems by Penelope Shuttle, Merryn Williams, Mike Jenkins, Neil Fulwood, Jo Waterworth, Jacqueline Smith, Colin Dardis, Angela T. Carr, Dave Lordan, Ruth Aylett, Jack Grady, Mark Cassidy, Maurice Devitt, Charles Bane, Jr., Nick Rush, Helen Harrison, John Throne, and Pete Mullineaux.