Poetry changes nothing... - 20 love poems and a howl of despair!

I was at this great event last Saturday in the countryside in Suffolk called Flipside…

It was basically a series of talks I'd been invited to participate in, and at first they seemed to be a bit random to me

A talk by the biographer of poet Pablo Neruda, Adam Feinstein.

A talk by the economist Ann Pettifor.

Me

And then a psychiatrist and surgeon talking about the NHS…

Feinstein was so passionate that he lost all track of time, and admittedly the story of Neruda's life was compelling.

When he was young he wrote about the heart, about love and loss - and romance and conjured the desperate feelings of youth and beauty.

But it wasn’t till he experienced the Spanish Civil War up close that he turned his back on his earlier style and started to use his voice to make a difference in the political discourse of the day.

Feinstein said "He began to see poetry as a weapon of social change during the Spanish Civil War"

This struck me as similar to George Orwell who also experienced the Spanish Civil War up close - in his book ‘Why I Write’ Orwell talks about his political purpose;

“The Spanish Civil war and other events in 1936-7 turned the scale and thereafter I knew where I stood.

Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic Socialism, as I understand it.

It seems to be nonsense, in a period like our own, to think that one can avoid writing of such subjects. Everyone writes of them in one guise or another.

It is simply a question of which side one takes and what approach one follows. And the more one is conscious of one’s political bias, the more chance one has of acting politically without sacrificing one’s aesthetic and intellectual integrity.

What I have most wanted to do throughout these past ten years is to make political writing an art.”

When Ann Pettifor took to the stage she started by auditing the language of economics, debunking these words that mean nothing and are designed only to keep our noses out of the affairs of the higher-ups, working in their rarified city jobs.. "credit default swaps" and she went on debunking one nonsense phrase after the next - again reminding me of Orwell's amazing line:

"Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind."

It was only later that I realised the entire day had been incredibly moving and coherent; all the speakers were approaching the same thing from different angles - they were weaving a fabric of care and impact - every one of them concerned with the world we share and the world we're leaving to the next generation.

Every one of them had taken a side. Every one of them had turned their words and stories into weapons of care.

Which brings me back to Power Station; it’s nothing more and nothing less than a collision between writing or producing art and fighting for a world worthy of the next generation.

And here's my message - if you want these alternative visions to flourish in this world, they need to be watered - they need to be supported and nurtured.

The work isn't easy, but it is necessary.

So please do visit our page and take part in the next steps of the Power Station. It can't happen without you.