{"id":12931,"date":"2019-05-01T14:47:10","date_gmt":"2019-05-01T13:47:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/mobilise-the-books-a-review-of-shabbigentile\/"},"modified":"2019-05-01T14:47:10","modified_gmt":"2019-05-01T13:47:10","slug":"mobilise-the-books-a-review-of-shabbigentile","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/mobilise-the-books-a-review-of-shabbigentile\/","title":{"rendered":"Mobilise the books! A review of Shabbigentile"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/p>\n

Andy Croft <\/strong>reviews <\/em>Shabbigentile, by Alan Morrison.<\/em><\/p>\n

There is a long poem in Alan Morrison<\/strong>\u2019s fantastic new collection Shabbigentile (Culture Matters, \u00a39, available here<\/a>) about the 1930s Left Book Club, invoking the idea of \u2018red belles-lettres ringing red bells \/ Of rebellion\u2019<\/em>:<\/p>\n

\u2018Now once more books need to be mobilised \/ Against the oncoming monsoon of moral \/ Panic and scapegoating in the face of a new \/ Gentrified fascism, a bespoke chauvinism… Poisoning the well of tolerant discourse.\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n

In many ways the whole collection is about mobilising books, \u2018print-antidotes \/ To right-wing hegemonies.\u2019<\/em> And in a book thick with references to Jack London, Dickens, Lukacs, Saint-Simon, Lukacs and John Davidson, Morrison knows that the best books are on our side.<\/p>\n

As always, Morrison\u2019s poetry is dense, eloquent and rich with information, ideas and arguments. There are some important long poems here, notably \u2018Another Five Giants\u2019 (about Tory and New Labour attacks on the Welfare State), \u2018Not Paternoster Square\u2019 (the Occupy Movement) and \u2018St Jude and the Welfare Jew\u2019 (racist tabloid newspapers accusing Jeremy Corbyn of anti-Semitism).<\/p>\n

The title of the book is a play on \u2018shabby genteel\u2019 and an attack on the ways that a nominally Christian society like the UK contains within it the forces of neo-liberalism, austerity, racism and fascism:<\/p>\n

\u2018red-top parrots of blue torch opinions \/ Igniting blue-touch tabloids, cropped topics, \/ Pre-packaged antagonisms, analgesic \/ Propagandas, austerity narratives… rabid Malthusians and poison pen Mendelists.\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Shabbigentile\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Andy Croft reviews Shabbigentile, by Alan Morrison. There is a long poem in Alan Morrison\u2019s fantastic new collection Shabbigentile (Culture Matters, \u00a39, available here) about the 1930s…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":368,"featured_media":12929,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1660],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12931","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-poetry-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12931","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/368"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12931"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12931\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12929"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12931"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12931"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12931"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}