Adrian Mitchell: the Voice of British Poetry in the late 20th Century

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Permalink Reply by David Gould on December 31, 2008 at 2:36am

HUMAN BEINGS

by Adrian Mitchell

Look at your hands
your beautiful useful hands
you’re not an ape
you’re not a parrot
you’re not a slow loris
or a smart missile
you’re human

not british
not american
not israeli
not palestinian
you’re human
not catholic
not protestant
not muslim
not hindu
you’re human

we all start human
we end up human
human first
human last
we’re human
or we’re nothing

nothing but bombs
and poison gas
nothing but guns
and torturers
nothing but slaves
of Greed and War
if we’re not human

look at your body
with its amazing systems
of nerve-wires and blood canals
think about your mind
which can think about itself
and the whole universe

look at your face
which can freeze into horror
or melt into love
look at all that life
all that beauty
you’re human
they are human
we are human
let’s try to be human

dance!

Permalink Reply by David Gould on December 31, 2008 at 2:38am

Permalink Reply by David Gould on December 31, 2008 at 2:42am

Permalink Reply by David Gould on December 31, 2008 at 2:43am

Adrian Mitchell
Poet and playwright | 1932 - 2008
Wordsmith whose simple but evocative lines helped reshape British poetry

Adrian Mitchell, one of Britain's most successful and inspiring writers, died on 20 December, 2008, aged 76.

Emerging in the 1960s, he became known for his fresh reinvention of British poetry, bringing it into the modern age as a medium of humour, passion and the espousing of political opinion.

His poems combined an earthy, simple nature with a steadfast sense of justice and terror of violence, making them both accessible and powerful.

He once wrote of his common touch, "Most people ignore most poetry because most poetry ignores most people."

He was also known for his scores of plays and television scripts. He adapted for the stage work by a huge variety of authors, ranging from Mozart and the Greek Classics to Gogol and Beatrix Potter.

He gave frequent readings of his poetry and also worked with children across the country to produce dramatic and poetic performances.

Adrian Mitchell was born in North London on 24 October, 1932. Writing of his childhood, he said, "I was educated at a nameless school in Hell and then at Greenways, a school in Heaven." It was at Greenways (actually in Wiltshire) that he staged his first play at the age of nine.

After national service in the RAF he studied English at Christ Church College, Oxford, where he won prizes for his poetry. He then embarked on a career in journalism, becoming the first reporter to interview The Beatles in the early 1960s.

In 1962 he quit journalism to dedicate himself to writing, completing a television play, Animals Can't Laugh, and a novel, If You See Me Comin'. He also became a central figure of London's underground literary scene. Michael Kustow, writing in the Guardian, described an encounter with him: "He leapt on stage in a many coloured coat like a Blakean challenger and a rock 'n' roll hero. He had fine music-hall timing and a gravity under all the quickfire jokes and patter."

Throughout his 46-year publishing career, he wrote prolifically, producing two dozen volumes of poetry (including 10 for children), four novels, 15 short story collections and more than 30 plays.

His most famous poem was To Whom It May Concern, a bitter, ironic and surreal anti-war tirade with the refrain "tell me lies about Vietnam", which he read to a packed Albert Hall during the 'Poetry Olympics' of 1965. This led to him joining the team of the Royal Shakespeare Company's anti-Vietnam play US (1966) and further heightening his reputation for political satire.

In his later work he wrote with what Ted Hughes called "the innocence of his own experience", reflecting on the multifarious incidents of childhood, ranging from wartime horrors to seaside holidays. "I don't know if it really happened sixty years ago," he wrote in In My Two Small Fists (2000), "but my memories shine and their light seems true."

He said he increased his amount of writing for children because of his six granddaughters, but the imagination and earnestness of his writing ensured its popularity spanned many generations.

He died in London from a heart attack after two months of illness. A few days before his death he completed a poem called My Literary Career So Far in which he described having a "Heart in Language" and a "Suit of Words". The verse was meant as a gift for his family, who included his wife Celia Hewitt, their two daughters, two sons and a daughter from a previous marriage and his grandchildren.

One of the writers he inspired, Michael Rosen, wrote in the Socialist Worker: "Adrian was a socialist and a pacifist who believed, like William Blake, that everything human was holy. That's to say he celebrated a love of life with the same fervour that he attacked those who crushed life. He did this through his poetry, his plays, his song lyrics and his own performances. Through this huge body of work, he was able to raise the spirits of his audiences, in turn exciting, inspiring, saddening and enthusing them

Permalink Reply by David Gould on December 31, 2008 at 2:44am

Poet, playwright and children's author Adrian Mitchell has died at the age of 76, it has been announced.

Mitchell was renowned for his political poems about nuclear war, Vietnam, prisons and racism which became part of the folklore of the Left.

Publisher Bloodaxe Books said on its website he had died after suffering from pneumonia for two months.

Mitchell, a former journalist, was dubbed the "shadow poet laureate" by socialist magazine Red Pepper in 2002.

Born in 1932, he was educated at Oxford and worked as a journalist from 1955 to 1966.

He gave hundreds of readings throughout the world in theatres, colleges, pubs, prisons and schools.

In a National Poetry Day poll in 2005, his poem Human Beings was voted the poem that most people would like to see launched into space.

Mitchell had just completed his latest book of poems, Tell Me Lies: Poems 2005-2008.

Final poem

The statement from Bloodaxe Books said: "We are enormously saddened by the sudden death of Adrian Mitchell, one of our most beloved poets."

On 18 December Mitchell wrote a poem entitled 'my literary career so far', which was intended for friends and family at Christmas.

As a footnote he added the following message: "I can't write letters and it’s hard to phone yer, as I recover from two months’ in pneumonia, so take this new riff with a glass of good wine, and drink to peace in 2009."
from the BBC

Permalink Reply by David Gould on December 31, 2008 at 2:45am

By WILLIAM GRIMES
Published: December 23, 2008
Adrian Mitchell, a prolific British poet whose impassioned verse against social injustice, racism and violence was often declaimed at antiwar rallies and political demonstrations, died on Saturday in London. He was 76.

He had been hospitalized for pneumonia, which may have brought on a heart attack, said his agent, Nicki Stoddart.

Mr. Mitchell, a spiritual descendant of William Blake, Walt Whitman and Bertolt Brecht, combined ferocity, playfulness and simplicity, with a broad audience in mind, in his poetry, plays, novels, song lyrics, children’s books and adaptations for the stage. His voluminous output included white-hot tirades against the Vietnam War, rapturous nature poems, nonsense verse and children’s tales of a wooly mammoth who returns to the modern world.

“Mitchell is a joker, a lyrics writer, a word-spinner, an epigrammist, a man of passion and imagination,” the art critic and novelist John Berger once wrote. “Against the present British state, he opposes a kind of revolutionary populism, bawdiness, wit and the tenderness sometimes to be found between animals.”

Mr. Mitchell was born in London and attended private schools. In 1952, after completing his national service in the Royal Air Force, an experience that, he said, “confirmed my natural pacifism,” he enrolled at Christ Church, Oxford. His original plan to train as a teacher fell by the wayside as he was drawn into a circle of poets that included George MacBeth and A. Alvarez and became literary editor of the magazine Isis.

After leaving Oxford in 1955, Mr. Mitchell worked as a journalist for The Oxford Mail and The Evening Standard in London. He also began performing at poetry readings and taking part in left-wing political work. “I think a poet, like any other human being, should recognize that the world is mostly controlled by political forces and should become politically active too,” he told the magazine Contemporary Poets in 1991.

His early poetry, nearly all of it political, in highly structured verse forms, relied on simple, democratic language. “Most people ignore most poetry because most poetry ignores most people,” he wrote in the preface to his first substantial collection, “Poems” (1964). His later poetry, often loose and improvisatory, included more personal subject matter. Much of it was written for children. Poems like “To Whom It May Concern (Tell Me Lies About Vietnam),” which he first read at a rally in Trafalgar Square in 1964 and has updated over the years to suit changing events, helped establish Mr. Mitchell as British poetry’s voice of the left.

The poem begins:

I was run over by the truth one day.

Ever since the accident I’ve walked this way

So stick my legs in plaster

Tell me lies about Vietnam.

In 2003, the socialist magazine Red Pepper anointed him Shadow Poet Laureate, an appropriate title for the author of the collections “Peace Is Milk” (1966), “Out Loud” (1968), “Love Songs of World War III” (1988) and “Heart on the Left” (1997).

He wrote many plays and adaptations for the stage, for adults and children. Most notably, he collaborated with Peter Brook on two productions for the Royal Shakespeare Company, Peter’s Weiss’s “Marat/Sade” (1964) and the antiwar play “US” (1966), for which he wrote seven song lyrics.

He also wrote “Tyger” (1971), a play about William Blake, and the song lyrics for Peter Hall’s stage version of George Orwell’s “Animal Farm.” And he edited “Blackbird Singing” (2001), a collection of Paul McCartney’s poetry and lyrics.

At his death Mr. Mitchell had just completed three works to be published next year: “Tell Me Lies: Poems 2005-2008” (Bloodaxe Books), the children’s collection “Umpteen Poems” (Orchard Books) and “Shapeshifters” (Frances Lincoln), a retelling of Ovid’s “Metamorphoses.”

His first marriage ended in divorce. He is survived by his wife, Celia Hewitt; three daughters, Briony, Sasha and Beattie; two sons, Alistair and Danny; and nine grandchildren.

In a 2005 poll conducted by the Poetry Society, Mr. Mitchell’s “Human Beings” was voted the poem that people most wanted to send into space in the hope that it would be read a century later. “It is about the joy of being human, but that doesn’t mean that it’s against animals or alien beings,” Mr. Mitchell said. “When it goes into space and it’s read by aliens, I’d hate for them to think that it’s anti-alternative life forms.”

Permalink Reply by David Gould on December 31, 2008 at 2:48am

To Whom It May Concern

I was run over by the truth one day.
Ever since the accident I've walked this way
So stick my legs in plaster
Tell me lies about Vietnam.

Heard the alarm clock screaming with pain,
Couldn't find myself so I went back to sleep again
So fill my ears with silver
Stick my legs in plaster
Tell me lies about Vietnam.

Every time I shut my eyes all I see is flames.
Made a marble phone book and I carved out all the names
So coat my eyes with butter
Fill my ears with silver
Stick my legs in plaster
Tell me lies about Vietnam.

I smell something burning, hope it's just my brains.
They're only dropping peppermints and daisy-chains
So stuff my nose with garlic
Coat my eyes with butter
Fill my ears with silver
Stick my legs in plaster
Tell me lies about Vietnam.

Where were you at the time of the crime?
Down by the Cenotaph drinking slime
So chain my tongue with whisky
Stuff my nose with garlic
Coat my eyes with butter
Fill my ears with silver
Stick my legs in plaster
Tell me lies about Vietnam.

You put your bombers in, you put your conscience out,
You take the human being and you twist it all about
So scrub my skin with women
Chain my tongue with whisky
Stuff my nose with garlic
Coat my eyes with butter
Fill my ears with silver
Stick my legs in plaster
Tell me lies about Vietnam.

-- Adrian Mitchell

Permalink Reply by Deniz Kite on January 3, 2009 at 10:40am

Beautiful David! Not only the poem, but the discussion page is, beautiful. Just read and I am now so curious about reading more.

Thank you,

Permalink Reply by David Gould on January 5, 2009 at 4:16pm

A Song for Maeve by Adrian Mitchell

I love to watch rivers
and the way they go
young rivers tumble
old rivers flow

I love to watch friends
when they are leeting go-
the tumbling laughter
and the story flow

and the words sweet Maeve uses
with such gaiety
go tumbling and flowing
to join the great sea

Permalink Reply by David Gould on January 8, 2009 at 2:45am

Deniz...Adrian published two dozen books and two more are coming out soon...he had them planned before he died...but as good a place to start as any is "The Shadow Knows" Poems 2000-2004 Adrian Mitchell (Bloodaxe Books 2004)...i keep a copy here by my side.

This poem by Robert Graves seems so fitting here...Adrian printed a copy of this poem in his 1994 anthology.

How is it a man dies?

How is it a man dies
Before his natural death?
He dies from telling lies
To those who trusted him.
He dies from telling lies -
With closed ears and shut eyes.

Or what prolongs men's lives
Beyond their natural death?
It is their truth survives
Treading remembered streets
Rallying frightened hearts
In hordes of fugitives.