Note on “Some Poems from the Passionate Margins of the Alt-Left”

If these poems are political (defiantly they are!), then they don’t sit comfortably for me within any doctrinal or dogmatic ideology. At the same time, they derive their anger and their energy from a passion which is rooted in a recognition of historical and contemporary injustice (whether subtle or more painfully searing), but which also looks to the courage of those prepared to stand up strongly against such degrading forms of oppression. Now and again, these short texts choose to laugh with or at such difficult experiences, also with some self-mocking (as we say in Dublin on the banks of the Liffey, ‘sláinte’). Whether one might say Marxist or Anarchist (or sometimes both), ultimately they conjoin in an ethos from Handsworth’s (neo-Caribbean) Steel Pulse; love thy neighbour. Ah, go on! 

An Irishman in Manchester the Night the Queen Died is part of the “Some Poems from the Passionate Margins of the Alt-Left” Series. You can see the previous poem here.