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Given the fragmentation of the British Left in the wake of Margaret
Thatcher's assault and the Labour Party's renunciation of Socialist principles, this book is a timely reminder of the ideas and ideals of the Socialist movement. It reminds us that those ideas have been espoused, at some time or other, by some of our best poets, and by some not normally associated with them. The Penguin Book of Socialist Poetry is long out of print, so this should be a welcome publication. Unfortunately, the editors' view of what constitutes 'socialist poetry' is a narrow one, leading to an unrepresentative selection, particularly of contemporary work, and raising uncomfortable questions about the failure of the British Left to accommodate intellectual and artistic movements.

After a short preface by Adrian Mitchell, and a surprisingly downbeat introduction by Andy Croft, we are presented with 300 pages and 153 poems by 117 poets. Despite the title, it is actually an anthology of British socialist poetry. A pre-requisite of Socialism is industrialisation, and it therefore seems reasonable, despite egalitarian movements dating back to Wat Tyler and Peasant’s Revolt, to begin with the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century. We start with Blake, Shelley, William Morris, John Clare and others. This seems a reasonable choice, but in a book spread as thinly as this, can’t help but appear as a mere nod to these figures (14 pages out of 300). And no Burns, at least as socialist as Charles Dickens (also included), and a much better poet. Blake is held up as the paragon. In his preface, Mitchell says ‘no one is more modern or revolutionary than William Blake’. Of course Blake can be moulded to fit any shape, from the religious visionary of Kathleen Raine, to the Jacobite insurrectionist of E.P. Thompson. The choice of his two poems here is symptomatic; an extract from ‘The Four Zoas’ which could be interpreted in numerous ways, and ‘London’ from Songs of Experience. But Blake also wrote about that eighteenth century symbol of revolution ‘The Tyger’, and the poem of that title has been read by many critics as a response to the atrocities in France. From the lack of any questioning approach to socialist ideas in the rest of the volume, it is clear that talk of ‘fearful symmetries’ would be too self-critical for this anthology.

At this point, it is worth mentioning the overall tone of this book. The
critic Andrew Duncan, when discussing one of the book’s editors, Adrian Mitchell, says:

   ‘...(Mitchell’s) own poetry is regressive; it slips back into an explanation of the world, and into poetic devices, which are palpably infantile and nostalgic.’

While it would be unfair to make the same accusation against the
anthology as a whole, there is certainly a large element of nostalgia, as well as a general simplicity of ideas. As a result, the view of socialism presented here is of a movement which had its heyday in the industrial past, and is nostalgically associated with that past. It’s interesting that there is no mention of contemporary movements, like environmentalism, or the anti-globalisation campaign.

The bulk of the poetry is twentieth century, starting with the poets of
World War I. These provide a reminder of the strength of revolutionary sentiment in Britain at that time, which is little acknowledged, and the poets included here are representative and well known.

It’s good to see little-known figures like Joe Corrie and F.C. Boden,
and especially to see women poets of the 1930s like Naomi Mitchison and Nancy Cunard. D.H. Lawrence is represented by two ballads, a form he wielded effectively as social commentary, but which is somewhat overdone in the rest of the book. Auden’s entry is ‘Musee des Beaux Arts’. This seems an odd choice, although it could be seen as a comment on political action versus apathy. Auden, of course, has written much more directly political work than this, but could never do so without his tongue in his cheek, or without the language running away with him, as in ‘Spain’ (which he famously repudiated). Both these approaches fit ill with the earnest tone of this anthology. C.Day Lewis gets two entries for Auden’s
one, both pale imitations of Auden’s early style, but which strike the right didactic and idealistic note.

As usual, the closer we get to the present, the more contentious the
choices become. A whole swathe of British poetry is missing. No Bill Griffiths, Richard Caddel, or Geraldine Monk (all socialist, all artistically adventurous). Instead, we have the banalities of Tony Harrison and the stifling conservatism of Sean O’Brien. Which is not to say that there isn’t some excellent work: a poem from Michael Rosen is representative; his ‘Fighters for Life’ is in the form of impassioned plain speech, and there are other good poems of this type by people like John Lucas, Alan Dent and others. Such poems are necessary. But in bulk, their effect is dulled, and requires the leavening of other idioms and styles.

In fact, there is very little in this book that is not expressed in language that is close to everyday usage. There is also little that is intellectually challenging or disturbing. The assumption perhaps, is that poetry must reach as many people as possible. But the argument that demanding poetry cannot also be popular is questionable. Latin Americans like Paz and Neruda were hugely popular in their own countries, despite making few cncessions to the ordinary reader. We saw a similar phenomenon in this country during World War II. In an essay on W.S. Graham, Peter Riley has pointed out that Dylan Thomas, and poets associated with him and the Apocalyptic movement, enjoyed a huge reading public even though Thomas’s early poetry is a demanding read, and is far removed from everyday
speech. George Barker’s entry, the only poem of this type included,
is strikingly different to the general tone.

So it seems that British poets writing ‘socialist’ poetry feel the need to simplify. Or do they? The work of JH Prynne is rooted in theoretical Marxism, while that of Bill Griffiths is concerned with working class culture and tradition expressed in modernist techniques such as collage and disjunction. There is no reason why either should not be in an anthology of socialist poetry. Were they both too intellectual, or simply too radical in their practice to merit inclusion? In his introduction, Andy Croft cites a long list of socialist poets of various nationalities. Many of these poets produced very different work to most of that found in this anthology. Poets like Pablo Neruda, André Breton, Tristan Tzara and others allied revolutionary politics with innovative poetic practice, constantly attempting to break barriers, both linguistic and conceptual. Such work has also been produced in Britain, but you would never know it from this anthology, which enshrines the long-standing mistrust of intellectuals and artists, that is not so much British socialist, as simply British.