Keeping track

Near Dunkeld, earlier this month

The cost

Governments can be terrorists too,

Save some pennies, all for the few.

What would Margaret Thatcher do?

Burn the poor for a better view.

RF 2017

I posted this little poem on facebook yesterday so some of you have seen it already but I post it here just to keep a record really (the blog is a little more permanent than facebook, though it gets less comments). I seem to be in a stream of these little reaction-rhymes just now (as opposed to reactionary rhymes...). I haven't written poems like this for a good few years but the times and events dictate the form sometimes... in fact maybe they always do (for me anyway). I have subtler work but subtle isn't everything. I had pretty much stopped writing rhyming poems (though not intentionally) but a couple have appeared in recent weeks. Maybe it was the Tony Walsh interview the other week that prompted this where he said, of poetry, “It’s ancient and it’s in us. I teach what I do, and in some ways I don’t so much teach it as allow people to find it in themselves. Particularly with rhyme, there’s a reason it’s been around for thousands of years. We live through rhythms and heartbeats. I think we’re hardwired to receive rhyme. When you get that balance between meaning and rhyme and flow, there’s a music to it which we respond to instinctively." Though of course, like anything, you can have too much of a good thing...

Anyway, this wee poem, obviously, came from reading, watching and listening to a lot of the coverage of, and reactions to, the Grenfell Tower disaster this week in London. I followed reports of the demonstrations yesterday too, pleased that people were speaking out but worried that there might be more deaths if the authorities dealt with the protests badly. Some of the UK media coverage is stupid but we expect that now. I hope the next generations find media that work better for them, that are more independent and much less keen on making us hate victims or the vulnerable. Writing so soon about the person whose flat (allegedly) was the source of the fire, for example, was premature and cruel (I think that was in The Daily Mail). I know the 'more in common' campaign (in Jo Cox's memory) is trying to improve media coverage in general (they got The Sun and others to print a 'more in common' editorial this week) but do we really believe such papers want to change? What would a positive, caring Sun newspaper even look like? Some of them have made their beds badly so many times that the dirt is never coming out of those sheets. Go and take a look at the front pages in the shops today and decide for yourself. I believe The Telegraph went for the old favourite ('militants hijack inferno protest') but maybe there were complaints as I can't see it on their website now. I went on quite a lot of London demonstrations when I was younger (and living down south... and Mrs Thatcher ruled the roost) and pretty much every time there was a march that was the story the press wheeled out (how they loved to feature 'militants vs. the police' stand-offs, how I hated being stuck in those closed-off streets...I'm quite claustrophobic...). And yes, there were people from far-left parties present on most of those demonstrations but they were usually a tiny minority and focusing on them was an easy way of avoiding the issue the demonstration was about (in those years the Public Order Act, Section 28, to name just the first two that come to mind).

Also this weekend there are many events planned for a Great Get Together to commemorate Jo Cox's death (one year ago yesterday). I watched the documentary on this week ('Death of an MP') and was so impressed by her life story, the energy she had, the love so many felt for her and, as most of you know, I wrote a poem last year prompted by her death. MPs can be good people, journalists can be good people, police officers (and 'militants'!) can be good people. We have to hold on to that and help those people stave off more austerity, more prejudice, more unnecessary deaths. I know this is all obvious. Isn't it?

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