Red Sky at Night: Socialist Poetry

An anthology of British socialist poetry. It starts with William Blake, John Clare, Charles Dickens and Shelley, and ends with Carol Ann Duffy, Benjamin Zephaniah, Jackie Kay and Mr Social Control. Here we have the poetry of the first world war (Isaac Rosenberg, Ivor Gurney); the celebration of revolution (Hugh McDiarmid, D H Lawrence); the hungry thirties (Auden, C Day Lewis and Louis MacNiece); the second world war years (Alun Lewis, Hamish Henderson); new post-war voices (Alex Comfort, Roger McGough); the years of colonial liberation (Adrian Mitchell, James Berry); new voices of black writing (Grace Nichols, Jean Binta Breeze) and the women's movement (Liz Lochhead, Alison Fell); the Thatcher years (Sean O'Brien, Anne Stevenson) and modern times (Kathleen Jamie, Linda France). In all - 153 poems from 117 poets. Many of the poets will be well-known to poetry readers....a few will be forgotten voices. Red Sky At Night tells the story of the movement of an idea from the margins of British life to the center, and then out again to its disreputable edges. It tells the story of the engagement by British poets with contemporary political events. And it provides a sustained political footnote to the literary history of the last century.