Having written and performed as The Big J in the 1980s, Janine started again in 2014, after a brief interlude of around a quarter of a century.
Froms sonnets to villanelles, limericks to ballads, the occasional rap and plenty of straightforward rants, serious and humorous and sometimes both, here is Janine's verse.
Janine's poems have been published in numerous poetry and other journals and websites, including Algebra of Owls, South Bank Poetry, the Daily Mirror, PUSH, Hour of Writes, Proletarian Poetry, Confluence Medway, Screaming Violets, Poetry24, Solidarity, Stand Up and Spit, Hastings Independent, Freedom, Women’s Fightback, the Morning Star, Rising and TenFootCity; and in anthologies Spies4Life, Poems for Jeremy Corbyn, Justice: Poems for Grenfell Tower.and Ashes to Activists
Submitted by Janine on
Day 1 confined to room - no going out
Day 2 do push-ups, Netflix, clean the floor
Day 3 phone friends and scrub the tiling grout
Day 4 a breakfast bag outside the door
Day 5 phone friends and tell them how I'm feeling
Day 6 lean out the window for some air
Day 7 sit-ups, Netflix, clean the ceiling
Day 8 phone friends to tell them I still care
Submitted by Janine on
Just a dusting's not enough
There's barely ample white to fight
It's floating free like frozen fluff
Just a dusting's not enough
No handful for a snowball - tough!
This winter's snowfall's far too light
Just a dusting not enough
There's barely ample white to fight
Submitted by Janine on
Boris is sorry - deeply sorry -
for every life that's been lost
Johnson is worried - deeply worried -
about the political cost
He takes responsibility - full responsibility -
for all of the government's actions
Johnson is possibly - in all probability -
counting financial transactions
Submitted by Janine on
It's Thursday evening, eight o'clock, no sound
No passing cars or footsteps on the ground
No pots or pans or cheering to be found
As nobody is clapping this time round
When this began, we clapped them off to war
Then came reports that we could not ignore
Low pay, long hours, no P.P.E. in store
Now no-one claps for carers any more
Submitted by Janine on
Trump set their touchpaper alight
They marched there tooled up for a fight
They're so convinced that they are right
And most still live - because they're white
Submitted by Janine on
After Come to Milton Keynes by Paul Weller
Me and the rest of the company grunts, we
know for sure that we are being used
as fodder for the god of profit, doff the cap to
ownership, it seems we’re whipped to chase
targets and schemes instead of our dreams.
Submitted by Janine on
China jails citizen journalist for Wuhan reports
Four years in jail for citizen reporter
Who spread the news from virus-struck Wuhan
Her mother cries in court to lose her daughter
She showed the world the sickness, did Zhang Zhan
So ominous the charges that they brought her
For breaking China’s free expression ban
Their stricken morals under smoking rubble,
‘Picking quarrels and provoking trouble’
Submitted by Janine on
After A Stone’s Throw Away by Paul Weller
News just in
of last year’s protests starting again in Chile
And hundreds of thousands massing in
the city streets for women’s rights in Poland
Burned-out squatters turning out in Johannesburg
Submitted by Janine on
After Earth Beat by Paul Weller
Her banner has a planet on, she’s
carrying resistance and insisting that the
government takes action for a new
start for a cleaner, greener future from today.
Submitted by Janine on
We're hiding from Storm Bella,
me and my lockdown crew
The kid, our pets, my fella,
we're hiding from Storm Bella
while listening to Paul Weller
and watching Doctor Who
We're hiding from Storm Bella,
me and my lockdown crew
