Poetry

Michael Gove

Spun and stitched and wove

A tapestry of policy

Of bloody awful quality

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Photo: Chris McAndrew / CC BY (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0)

Herbert Morrison
was moderate and worrisome
He had an appropriate grandson:
Peter Mandelson

Peter Mandelson
could not get a handle on
The passionate, radical, principled and quarrelsome:
rather like his grandfather, Herbert Morrison

Emmeline Pankhurst
among feminists, ranked first
Until she ruined her story
by becoming a Tory

Henry the Third
was somewhat absurd
He endorsed the Great Charter
and ignored it thereafter

Tony Abbott
jumps like a rabbit
from homophobic bile
to climate change denial

Simon de Montfort
got off on the wrong foot
He persecuted the Jewish
but won the Battle of Lewes

Finally getting round to posting this video from four years ago. It is one of my favourite of my poems!

Thomas McColl and Janine Booth on London Live on 16 April 2018, promoting the anthology, Poems for Grenfell Tower.

Includes a video extract of Janine's poem, Bring it Home.

Five Leaves Bookshop hosts Janine reading her poem, Stay the Fuck Home, which features in the anthology, Coronaverses: poems from the pandemic.

I have contributed this short article to Black History Month activities where I work.

Poems of the Harlem Renaissance
- recommended by Janine Booth