, edited by Ben Harker<\/em><\/p>\nIt makes sense to review these volumes together as there are overlapping themes. Both are poets who were staunch communists. Both wrote in the face of the rise of fascism, the necessity of resistance and the outbreak of war.<\/p>\n
While stylistically there are some overlaps, the two are very different poets. The publication of these books by Smokestack gives us the opportunity to assess and compare their works, but also, in light of these, to consider three linked questions \u2013 what might constitute a properly communist poetry; whether such a poetry might be conceivable today; and what might be salvageable from the failures of the communist project in the past to retrieve as \u00a0a point of distinction from the betrayals of social democracy and the collapse of \u201cofficial communism.\u201d<\/p>\n
How might any of this be made to make sense as anything other than an exercise in nostalgia? In a time when the possibility of the overthrow of capitalism seems so proscribed by both capitalism\u2019s capacity for self-renewal and by the defeat of any lived alternatives, what can we take from a poetry of Spain in the Civil War, of the Blitz, of the poverty of the 1930s, that might help us chart a way out of the twin impasses of political pessimism and an aesthetic conservatism that manifests either as a dead-end contextless recycling of\u00a0 stale pseudo-Prynnian\u00a0 tropes or inoffensive pastoral verse?<\/p>\n
To turn to Branson first, we should admit that both a strength and weakness of his writing is its seeming spontaneity, the almost improvisational quality to it, as if it represents an unedited attempt to make sense of life while he is in the midst of events.<\/p>\n
Branson was born in India , joined the Communist Party in 1932, took a leading role in driving the British Union of Fascists out of Battersea, and fought with the International Brigade in Spain. He was conscripted in 1941 and killed in action in Burma in 1944. His life then, brief as it was, encompassed a commitment to struggle against fascism both via street fighting and via military means and he did not shirk from any of this.<\/p>\n
One of the most striking aspects of his poetry therefore is the fact that his rage against the injustices he encounters is always at the forefront of his work. This is from \u201cForward\u201d (p.33):<\/p>\n
Because it\u2019s time for a revolution<\/em><\/p>\nTo end the beating up of man by man,<\/em><\/p>\nTo do away with the police nark, stool pigeon, assassin<\/em><\/p>\nJudge, gaol. <\/em><\/p>\nAnd, again, from the poem \u201cLondon\u201d (p.53):<\/p>\n
This shadow\u2019s magnitude is entirely yours.<\/em><\/p>\nBut not the depth of night, the sense of darkness.<\/em><\/p>\nThe will to feel belongs to us and ours:<\/em><\/p>\nNo, not to armed police, businessmen and bankers.<\/em><\/p>\nAnd, in \u201cLondon\u201d, this clear sense of possibility, the \u201cwill to feel\u201d, is articulated against both a clear description of the oppressive machinery of the capitalist state, and the terror it maintains:<\/p>\n
In peoples\u2019 eyes look fear,no sleep, and despair.<\/em><\/p>\nChildren must feed on hunger, read the pavement<\/em><\/p>\nWhile mother labours to quicken dad\u2019s massacre<\/em><\/p>\nIn this mad-house of profit, interest and rent.<\/em><\/p>\nWe can see these as blunt, effective representations of a distinctly communist aesthetic. Roberto Schwartz has described Bertolt Brecht\u2019s works as seeking to \u201cdemonstrate that actions of everyday life also have a representational aspect: the roles played there could be different, too, for social processes were mutable.\u201d (New Left Review second series 57).<\/p>\n
There is no need to make grandiose comparisons with Brecht to see that Branson is attempting something similar here, a refusal of illusion and a belief in revolutionary possibility. What is also distinct, and I think is clear in both Branson\u2019s work, and, as we shall see, in Slater\u2019s, is an acceptance of the need for (not glorification of) revolutionary violence. \u00a0As Branson sets out, in \u201cThe General Didn\u2019t Know\u201d (p.93):<\/p>\n
We are the people those bombs hit again-<\/em><\/p>\nand again-there\u2019s always printers ink<\/em><\/p>\nfor tomorrow\u2019s press-and again-<\/em><\/p>\nthere\u2019s always plenty of drink<\/em><\/p>\nfor the General Staff – again<\/em><\/p>\nuntil we realise WE are the men, the women,<\/em><\/p>\nthe children killed in the press<\/em><\/p>\nby the generals for the rich<\/em><\/p>\nwho have no feelings, cannot feel our pain.<\/em><\/p>\nThe solution Branson looks towards is to fight a war against war, to turn the war against fascism ultimately into a revolutionary war. (\u201cPeace the bloodier crime\u201d, as he puts it in \u201cDecember 1936, Spain.\u201d) There is a distinctly Orwellian mood to his writing in this regard, in his reverence for England, and for a patriotic socialism.<\/p>\n
Orwell said, in The Lion and the Unicorn, that \u201cIt is only by revolution that the native genius of the English people can be set free\u2026The England that is only just beneath the surface, in the factories and the newspaper offices, in the aeroplanes and the submarines, has got to take charge of its own destiny.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Branson calls upon the legacy of Chartism, peasant revolts \u201cfighting that those who worked should own the land\/not Baron, Priest or King. They failed\/Though never for want of knowing the power they held\u201d (May First p.95) so that:<\/p>\n
We take this oath<\/em><\/p>\nno matter the consequence to ourselves-life or death-<\/em><\/p>\nwe pledge our whole strength to raise once again<\/em><\/p>\nthe banner of liberty, the banner of Englishmen.<\/em><\/p>\nHe concludes \u201cLet every Englishman fight for this cause\/Communism is English! Freedom is ours!\u201d.<\/p>\n
Some will take issue with this form of revolutionary patriotism, but whatever else we might want to argue, it is\u00a0 distinctly republican and thereby distinct also from the retreat to shallow patriotism of, for instance, Keir Starmer (from human rights lawyer to endorser of detention of refugees) or the cautious reformism of the various iterations of Britain\u2019s Road to Socialism.<\/p>\n
With its vital call to \u201chead the assault\/against the world\u2019s tyrants who rule through our fault\u201d and to \u201cFight with no rest till Fascism ends in rout\u201d (\u201cSoldier Just Take a Look\u201d p.74) Branson\u2019s writing also suggests that something was lost in the post-war years that was not simply about the debates about socialism in one country or permanent revolution, but an entire way of conceiving social transformation \u2013 its extent and how it might be brought about. That the tradition of Cable Street and Spain and the tradition of Labour Party entryism and campus paper sales are worlds apart, and that there is not a red thread from then to now but a discontinuity.<\/p>\n
Orwell set it out as \u201cIn all societies the common people must live to some extent against the existing order\u201d. It is this \u201cliving against\u201d and what it requires that we have forgotten but which runs throughout Branson\u2019s work.<\/p>\n
But there is something strange in there too. It is probably best described as a kind of pagan materialism, and it emerges from Branson\u2019s own wrestling with the horrors of\u00a0 a world wracked by poverty, fascism and war \u2013 the same existentialist dilemma that resulted in the Sartrean turn in French post- war thought, faced with both the reality of finitude that war so brutally and casually\u00a0 made clear, and the willingness of so many to compromise with fascism.<\/p>\n
It is a love of nature which is vigorous, almost Lawrentian. It is the exact opposite of the Francoist injunction \u201cLong Live Death.\u201d It is there in Branson\u2019s fascination in \u201cAeroplane\u201d (p.25) with the \u201cPower to touch the stars.\u201d It is there in his acceptance of the possibility of death in Zero Hour (p.30) , in a reversal of Nietzsche that insists \u201cNo! Not like the sun do the dead repeat\/The farce of their eternal repetition\u201d. In \u201cForward\u201d Branson condemns:<\/p>\n
The writer who says he has no time to care<\/em><\/p>\nfor the daffodil or cowslip<\/em><\/p>\nwho thereby:<\/p>\n
shames\/The very revolution he proclaims\/He is no better than the millionaire\/Who clears the ground of trees\/shrubs\/weeds.\u201d<\/em>(p.33)<\/p>\nIn Today My Eyes (p.70) , Branson states that \u201cThe dead deserve no eyes who from their birth\/ Neglect to learn the beauty of the earth.\u201d What stands out most in all of this is the unflinching, death-haunted, sensibility, and a coldness in his imagery that shows how the spectre of the triumph of fascism had so disrupted his natural optimism.<\/p>\n
Like a new cut on a young girl\u2019s shoulder<\/em><\/p>\nthe sun left a crimson scar.<\/em><\/p>\nThrough barbed wire<\/em><\/p>\nWe can feel the day\u2019s passing<\/em><\/p>\nand evening<\/em><\/p>\nwarns us of night, the complete end.<\/em><\/p>\n(Sunset, p.84)<\/p>\n
Branson writes as lover and soldier \u2013 at a time when he, like many others had made a decision to risk their lives against a force committed to maintaining inequality through genocide and permanent war. His proximity to the grave made him all to aware of how much he loved life and what he was therefore willing to lose:<\/p>\n
Gone are the times of romance ! Over wide<\/em><\/p>\nAcres of night death ploughs the ruts of doom<\/em><\/p>\nChanging the destiny of tomb and womb.<\/em><\/p>\n(Soldier Just Take A Look, p. 74)<\/p>\n
![\"Slater\"](\"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/06\/Slater.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
The cultural war against capitalist ideology<\/strong><\/p>\nMontagu Slater is the better-known writer, insofar as he is remembered as the librettist of Benjamin Britten\u2019s opera, Peter Grimes (the libretto and a deleted \u201cMad Song\u201d are contained herein). Slater worked with Britten, John Grierson and WH Auden at the GPO film unit, and helped develop the realist documentary tradition, with its commitment to show things \u201cas they are.\u201d<\/p>\n
Slater saw his involvement in the arts as part of a cultural war against capitalist ideology and the development of a revolutionary culture to help bring about a new and emancipated society. He was one of the founders of the Left Review, and worked across a range of art forms \u2013 poetry, theatre, film, pageantry and puppetry.<\/p>\n
Ben Harker\u2019s introduction provides an excellent overview of this. Slater\u2019s view of culture encompassed folk poetry, Piers Ploughman, William Blake, music hall, popular theatre, and penny dreadfuls. His commitment to bringing about a genuinely popular revolutionary culture mirrors Branson\u2019s faith in the revolutionary elements of English history. All of this we should note, preceded and doubtless impacted on Christopher Hill, Eric Hobsbawn, E.P. Thompson and the history-from-below that they developed within the CP tradition.<\/p>\n
We find again, in Slater, that pagan materialism which rendered much of Branson\u2019s poetry a strange delight. In An Elegy (p.33) Slater writes:<\/p>\n
Our little lives, our chapels and our hymns,<\/em><\/p>\nmining and fishing-apostolic round –<\/em><\/p>\na tidal river governed with its whims<\/em><\/p>\nneap tides renew but spring tides leap the bounds.<\/em><\/p>\nSometimes this can take a surprising turn. \u201cIn the Beginning: A Broken Narrative\u201d is shattered, impressionistic, one moment reflecting on the 1926 General Strike and the tactics used to atomise a workforce, the next leaping to something that could be straight out of Apollinaire:<\/p>\n
Skies, violet in the early stage<\/em><\/p>\nPurple by increment<\/em><\/p>\nInaugurate the stratosphere<\/em><\/p>\nBlack as bedazzlement<\/em><\/p>\nSun-bathing our defiancies<\/em><\/p>\nToughening skin to breed<\/em><\/p>\nDimitrov physiognomies<\/em><\/p>\nLike greyhounds are for speed.<\/em><\/p>\nThe shift in tone delivers up that shift to a mood that is exactly defiant, stratospheric, despite the strategizing of the factory boss, so that the poem, and, as Slater perceives it, the cultural intervention per se, becomes \u201ca word like a rivet\/Red hot, to be dropped in.\u201d<\/p>\n
What is also of interest in relation to Slater\u2019s work, most obviously in Peter Grimes, is a commitment to working through an understanding of psychoanalytic theories. Thus, his materialism expands to incorporate this and is enriched by it.<\/p>\n
He contends in Character Equals Situation (p.50) that \u201cThe plain man\u2019s plain prosaic lie\u2026is shame.\u201d \u00a0In Your Touch Hast Still (p.71) there is a brief illumination of how this might be worked through to a possibly liberatory effect: \u201cMythology breaks down, a gap\/Lets in the undecided hope.\u201d The two materialisms, the psychoanalytic and the nature-grounded, combine to their most beautiful effect in Now Praise (p.53):<\/p>\n
Fatigue may cloud<\/em><\/p>\nThe spinal fluid<\/em><\/p>\nBut thought will speed<\/em><\/p>\nThe dancing blood<\/em><\/p>\nWhich traces veins<\/em><\/p>\nso delicate<\/em><\/p>\nThat you would say<\/em><\/p>\nThe body thought.<\/em><\/p>\nBare to the sun<\/em><\/p>\nWorship and study<\/em><\/p>\nThis gold, this gold<\/em><\/p>\nHuman body.<\/em><\/p>\nA commitment to communist militancy<\/strong><\/p>\nWhat then, can we take from these collections? What can we learn from the works of 2 communist poets, the later of who died in 1956 , before Khrushchev\u2019s speech, before Cuba, before the collapse of Stalinism?<\/p>\n
Let us say that most obviously we can take inspiration from their determined commitment to the use of poetry not simply to reflect or to inspire, but to expose, to put into practice that \u201canti-illusionism\u201d which Brecht most obviously sought to exemplify. We hear much now about \u201cculture wars\u201d, but should it not be the case that culture ought to be fought as a war \u2013 between the old order of rent, exploitation, racism, misogyny and homophobia, and the new order we want to bring about? Should we not commit to the relentless critique of what is? What\u2019s the alternative \u2013 a commitment to a form of art that offers catharsis through tragic form, but thereby does nothing to move anything an inch further forward? A beautiful resignation? Neither Branson or Slater are \u201cgreat\u201d poets, but their work inspires, excites, rages and denounces and refuses to be passive.<\/p>\n
In his essay \u201cMarxism and Poetry\u201d, Ernst Bloch writes of poetry as \u201cimagination without lie.\u201d He states that a \u201crevolutionary poetry\u201d does not demand the sacrifice of imagination, but the acceptance of a poetry where \u201cthe bleakness, solitude and disorientation of late capitalism are pressing concerns.\u201d<\/p>\n
He notes though, that poetry is not history. That historiographers express what happened, and poets what might well happen. This I think is the second point to take from reading Branson and Slater, and relates to that pagan\/ Freudian materialism, and how we might conceive a communist poetry today. Bloch says that \u201cmeaningful poetry makes the world become aware of an accelerated flow of action.\u201d<\/p>\n
In other words, it is not passive, or pastoral. It conceives of a world which is dynamic and plastic. Bloch says that \u201cTruth is ultimately the demonstration of tendency and latency of what has not yet developed and needs its agent.\u201d Poetry, if both unillusioned and optimistic, might be one of those possible agents. Reading Slater and Branson at their best shows us a way to attempt that task.<\/p>\n
As for the lessons we might more directly learn \u2013 what really separated the communism of Branson and Slater from the lefts of today? A commitment to ideological struggle, to not flinching from, and taking the initiative in, culture wars; a commitment to a revolutionary humanism and class struggle, and to militant anti-fascism as a recognition that fascism was committed to militant inequality and had to be fought relentlessly as such; and a refusal of (to quote Orwell again) \u201cflabby pacifism.\u201d Even though Branson and Slater carry with them some of the baggage of the degeneration of the CPGB, their writings still give an indication of what the commitment to communist militancy might truly mean.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Nick Moss reviews two new books from Smokestack Books:\u00a0The Selected Poems of Clive Branson, edited by Richard Knott, and The Collected Poems of Montagu Slater, edited by…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":645,"featured_media":15353,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1660],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15358","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-poetry-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15358","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/645"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15358"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15358\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15353"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15358"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15358"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15358"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/06\/ef8b4f58175a113f41adf6539b5278b7.jpg\")
<\/p>\n