Ten radical poems for National Poetry Day

Like the song says, socialism is about bread, but also roses. With the help of rs21 members we’ve gathered ten poems about the fight against capitalism, racism and women’s oppression, and our dreams for a better world.

Diego Rivera mural

We’ve put them together with images into a short publication. With writers from William Blake to Maya Angelou, we hope there’s something for everyone.

Click on the image below to read the poems.

Ten radical poems

Let us have your comments – and maybe share your own favourite poems.

5 COMMENTS

  1. Thank you for this collection – I very much enjoyed it. Idris Davies, Welsh coal-miner poet, is most well-known for The Bells of Rhymney, part of a volume called Gwalia Deserta. Another volume – The Angry Summer – captured life during the 1926 General Strike. Here is poem number 27 from The Angry Summer:
    “These men went into the gloom
    And the danger day by day,
    Went down with a curse and a joke
    And believed that Britain should be
    Greater for all their toil.
    And then when the profits were high
    And the bags of gold were full,
    The men who created the gold
    Were told that the time was come
    To lower the standards of life
    And exist on fewer loaves,
    Less meat and butter and cheese.
    So out of the grime they came,
    Insulted and angry and proud,
    Together to march in the sun
    With a song and a curse and a vow,
    Together to challenge the creed
    That blood is baser than gold,
    Together to stand to the end,
    Together to live or die.”

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