Poetry for the Many: An Anthology

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Rutger Bruining, Founder and CEO of StoryTerrace, comments on how poetry should be accessible for all: As well as Brand, Peake and Rosen, the writer Melissa Benn has contributed to the anthology, along with actor Julie Hesmondhalgh, director Ken Loach, film-maker and writer Morag Livingstone, comedian Francesca Martinez, journalist Gary Younge and trade unionist and political strategist Karie Murphy. I thought committed re-educators of youth and public taste like Len and Jeremy wanted poetry to be for the Many, not the Few?

It’s because poetry is extremely hard to do well, and if you think that’s not the case, then you’ve either never tried it, or you’re utterly tone deaf to the crapness of your own efforts. Hmmm. Which, do you think, applies to Corbyn? How many members of the public think a woman can’t have a penis, for example? About 99 percent. And how many, like the leftists who took over Labour during Corbyn’s tenure, think they can? About 1 per cent. On every given issue under the sun, from trans rights, to mass immigration, to the armed forces, to BLM, the likes of Len and Jeremy actually represented the opinions of the metropolitan Few, not the normal Many. None. I’m writing this column next to a bookshelf of my favourite poetry collections (including Seeing Things by the very working-class Seamus Heaney, as it happens), and I could no more write a poem than I could do astrophysics.In reading Poetry for the Many, you will journey through a rich selection of their favourite verse, and hear from Jeremy and Len in their own words as they describe how they came across each poem and the impact it had on them. At the same time, they will encourage you, the reader, to embrace poetry and shake off any notion that it is not something to be read, written, or appreciated by working class people. This book gives the reader an opportunity to look behind the well-documented public faces of Len and Jeremy, to discover the influences that shaped their strong values and beliefs. Speaking about the release of his poetry collection, McClusky stated that “It should be mandatory on the national school curriculum to make poetry accessible to every child and student, so that the stigma in working-class communities about it being only for ‘posh people’ can gradually be eliminated”. Since the advent of StoryTerrace, we have seen literature have the power to inspire and uplift people from all walks of life – and this is what truly lies at the core of our ethos, giving everyone a space to share their story and to explore the nuances of their lifetime through the power of literature.

Jeremy and Len, the former leaders of the Labour Party and Unite the union, are well known to anyone in Britain with an interest in politics – and to many further afield as well. It’s fair to say that neither man fares well in the reporting of a mainstream media in thrall to vested interests. The premise of this book sounds a lot like the kind of thing that makes people laugh at the left, in that they are so blinded with self-righteousness that they can’t see how bizarrely condescending they are. When it comes to accommodation in Scotland, there's a fantastic choice of amazing stays from luxury hotels to glamping getaways.As a left-leaning Romanticist who also loves Douglas Adams, I feel like I should at least dip my toes into this pool, however muddied. First of all, the anthology looks fascinating, including reflections from Corbyn, McCluskey, and other contributors on what the selected poems mean to them, with an explicit desire to appeal to a working-class readership and to connect poetry reading to political activism. I look forward to it being reviewed in Romantic Textualities and elsewhere. Next, I want to close read the extract from the poem that Corbyn selected for his tweet, before comparing it with an example of Adams’‘Vogon poetry’. The Shelley extract reads: Children in ALL schools should have their creativity encouraged” — POETRY FOR THE MANY author Jeremy Corbyn featured in The Edinburgh Reporter (8/28/2023) Jeremy Corbyn and Len McCluskey collaborated to help achieve the biggest electoral success for socialism in recent British history. The two men share a passionate belief in a fairer, more equal Britain, encapsulated in Labour’s election slogan “For the many, not the few.” In other words, poems should function primarily as a handy means of verbal, pseudo-literary indoctrination of their readers or listeners. Unlike, say, Robert Graves or Ted Hughes, who viewed poets almost as modern-day shamans, for Len and Jeremy, poets should be propagandists. One versifier included is a Palestinian Communist, for example: shamefully, he isn’t gay and in a wheelchair, too. Surprisingly, one left-wing poet who doesn’t appear in Poetry for the Many is Josef Stalin, who held youthful ambitions in this area himself, once; maybe he will make an appearance in the book’s sequel. Adolescent verse