political science

It’s perhaps not surprising that there should be a resurgence of expressly political poetries these days. In venues that don’t usually sponsor a high proportion of specifically engaged work this is perhaps significant if not surprising. Even Cambridge is getting into it. Last week the University of Kent hosted Canadian poet Steve Collis who talked and read from his poems associated with Vancouver’s Occupy movement. This was intelligent work, embracing ‘impurity’, making use of documents and various voices. I found myself thinking about Ed Sanders Investigative Poetry and in particular, Sanders’ comments on the footnote. On Tuesday at the Blue Bus reading Fran Lock read political work of some power dealing with the eviction of the Gypsies from Dale Farm, alongside Marcus Slease and Lesley McKenna (shown above). In a week’s time Birkbeck will be hosting a conference on Poetry and Revolution. A Crossing The Line reading held in conjunction with the conference will feature Tom Leonard Jack Hirschman, Ziba Karbassi, Marianne Morris, Sean Bonney and Harry Gilonis.