Unlike the categories of political economy, poetry will never be essential to a correct definition of capitalist society. In this sense, it will never need to exist – but it is exactly in this sense that it has something to contribute\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0Danny Hayward, \u2018Militant Poetics<\/a>\u2019<\/p><\/blockquote>\n *<\/p>\n A political demo is nothing without people. But what is it without poems?<\/p>\n On a Saturday in March 2016, over 20,000 people marched through London in solidarity with refugees who are forced to flee from their homes. The event was the yearly Stand Up To Racism <\/em><\/a>national march, with the continuing aim of speaking out against racism.<\/p>\n We stood gathered on the smoothed flagstones of Trafalgar Square, cold, fidgety, absorbing words that confirm the great injustices of the world, eating fig rolls and sipping tea… as is the way with these things.<\/p>\n I wondered if anyone else was remembering the times they\u2019d stood here before: Anti-Austerity. SlutWalk. Pride. The passage through, on the way to hear Jeremy Corbyn\u2019s speech, when my friend turned to me and said \u2018I\u2019ve got goosebumps…\u2019<\/p>\n Electricity. Static. Gravity. Grace. \u2018Goosebumps\u2019 certainly go some way to explaining the unfounded jolt of vitality that mysteriously holds a clutch of people together on the flagstones of Trafalgar Square.<\/p>\n But at Stand Up For Racism<\/em>, that clutch took the form of a poem. It was poetry that held us together.<\/p>\n To begin, Sally Hunt, General Secretary of UCU, read Warsan Shire\u2019s \u2018Home\u2019<\/a>. Shire is a Somali-British poet, who has been speaking out for refugees<\/a> alongside the likes of JJB Bola, Yovanka Perdigao, Yomi Sode and Deanna Rodger. \u00a0Shire\u2019s poem confronts the notion\u00a0of voluntary exile. To seek \u2018refuge\u2019 is to leave a home that is no longer a home:<\/p>\n no one leaves home unless …<\/p>\n no one leaves home unless home chases you …<\/p>\n no one chooses refugee camps …<\/p>\n When Sally Hunt read this poem, it changed the tone of the anti-racism march. In Shire\u2019s poem, \u2018no one\u2019 and \u2018home\u2019 set up a rhythm. She turns the refugee \u2018crisis\u2019 into a poetic patterning. As this rhythm picks up, Shire\u2019s poem buzzes with the gravity of its own statement.<\/p>\n It builds, yet it remains static. <\/p>\n Shortly afterwards, Julie Ward, poet and MEP who beat BNP Nick Griffin to the North West seat in 2014, took to the stand. Ward openly mixes politics and poetry. Her MEP homepage blurb opens with an excerpt from James Russell Lowell\u2019s \u2018The Present Crisis\u2019.<\/p>\n Then Michael Rosen, former Children\u2019s Laureate, read a poem he wrote on his way to the demo<\/a>.\u00a0It too uses a rhythm of breath-work:<\/p>\n Our governments migrate bombs Listening to this poem in Trafalgar Square, we tried to follow the variants of each couplet.<\/p>\n Bombs. Drones. Bullets. War. Money. Billions… *<\/p>\n What is poetry doing in these nooks and crannies of politics?<\/p>\n A handful of writers are trying to understand how and why poems are making themselves known at political demos. Franco \u2018Bifo\u2019 Berardi thinks poetry can bring an uprising. For poets Danny Hayward and Jennifer Moxley<\/a>\u00a0poetry is invaluable, because, literally, it contributes nothing. Poetry defies capitalism.<\/p>\n There are obvious counterpoints to this idea.\u00a0Austerity Measures: The New Greek Poetry <\/em>has just been published by Penguin. It contains translated modern Greek poems that deal with austerity in Greece. But it’s retailing at \u00a310.99… On a\u00a0more\u00a0sour\u00a0note, in January Donald Trump used a poem about snakes to dehumanise refugees.<\/p>\n But Austerity Measures<\/i>, Shire, Rosen and Ward, are\u00a0signs that poetry is engaging the literary world in the political world. As the editor Karen Van Dyck notes, Greek poetry has become abundant in an age of austerity: find it on walls, at demos, at slam events, and even in empty car parks.<\/p>\n John Berger once wrote some pertinent words. Speaking about political pockets of resistance, Berger says:<\/p>\n \u00a0The many pockets do not have a common political programme as such… their heterogeneity may be a promise. What they have in common is their defence of the redundant, the next-to-be-eliminated, and their belief that the Fourth World War is a crime against humanity.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n I keep coming back to this. I keep coming back to it, just like I keep marching through London hoping for change. I thought I was looking for people, but lately, I\u2019ve realised I\u2019m looking for poems.<\/p>\n *<\/p>\n
\nhome is the mouth of a shark<\/p>\n
\nfire under feet
\nhot blood in your belly<\/p>\n
\nor strip searches where your
\nbody is left aching
\nor prison<\/p>\n
\nIt proceeds, yet it returns.
\nRead it out loud as many times as you like, the poem remains the same.
\nThe world is static to the poem, and the poem still before it.
\nAnd there they are: the goosebumps.<\/p>\n![\"Terrance](\"http:\/\/blogs.kcl.ac.uk\/english\/wp-content\/blogs.dir\/141\/files\/2016\/04\/Terrance-Hayes.jpg\")
<\/a>
\nbut they don’t call that migration.
\nOur governments migrate drones
\nbut they don’t call that migration
\nOur governments migrate bullets
\nbut they don’t call that migration.<\/p>\n
\nBut eventually, all we hear is a bolt of electricity running through the static construct: \u2018Our governments migrate… but they don\u2019t call that migration\u2019.
\nThe poem is painfully simple and ingloriously graceless.
\nAnd there they are again: the goosebumps.<\/p>\n![\"Greek](\"http:\/\/blogs.kcl.ac.uk\/english\/wp-content\/blogs.dir\/141\/files\/2016\/04\/Greek-poet-at-Political-protest.jpg\")
<\/a>