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 and Justice: Poems for Grenfell Tower.
Submitted by Janine on
Work hard, be conscientious, be afraid
Your life won't be worth living if you fail
The only thing that matters is your grade
Feel guilty for each error you have made
Learn quotes by rote and don't stop to exhale
Work hard, be conscientious, be afraid
Of falling short of A-star accolade
Don't eat, don't sleep, travail your skin to pale
The only thing that matters is your grade
Submitted by Janine on
Boris Johnson nominates
the President of the United States
He says the Nobel Prize for Peace
should go to Donald Trump
But that joker has been played before
No satire in it any more
Irony died, doesn't he see?
when Kissinger won it in seventy-three
Submitted by Janine on
Sorry?
Is
Jeremy Hunt
for real?
Up to 270 dead is
the toll of that 'glitch'
That is
Hundreds of women gone
unscanned, untreated
Hundreds of women gone
That is
the toll of that 'glitch'
Up to 270 dead is
for real.
Jeremy Hunt
is
sorry.
Submitted by Janine on
Filmed on location at Grenfell Tower by Adrianne McKenzie.
Submitted by Janine on
Hi there, it's Ashleigh
from the Daily Mail
I've smelled a story
I'm on the trail
I want to sound street
and your tweets are sick, mate
I'm getting desperate
for some clickbait
Hi there, it's Ashleigh -
you're at the scene
I'm in my office
and I'm really keen
To get a tasty
stabbing quote
About some feral,
lowlife scroat
Submitted by Janine on
A short, satirical poem about Henry Bolton's fall from grace, performed by Janine Booth at Ealing TUC's International Women's Day celebration on 8 March 2018.
Submitted by Janine on
The marvellous Modern Minstrels sing Janine's lyrics to Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah, with a fabulous selection of appropriate images.
Submitted by Janine on
Submitted by Janine on
This table is reserved for The Poetry
for this pub and for all who sail on it
A villanelle, pantoum or ballad
or free verse, sestina or sonnet
It's not for a hen night or party
but for words that take note of the times
It's not trying to sell you a dinner
it is ticking out meter and rhyme
Submitted by Janine on
I peeled back the adverts and found
a beautiful town
Waiting at the bus stop
I stilled the rotating displays
and pasted timetables and useful information
in their place
I restored all the lamp posts
to their role as posts bearing lamps
rather than gallows
from which buy-me banners hang
