Michael Conley

Nice to get back from Wales and get my contributor copy of Poetry Wales

I mean, it does not matter whether people who vote for fascists are badly misguided, just stupid or plain evil either. The results are the same regardless, and should be met with the same response.

Palestinian flags ❌ Ukraine flags ✅ The message couldn’t be clearer—the British establishment knows exactly whose lives it values, and whose are worth nothing.

Again, there was almost no public element in this: no organic surge in public opinion to demand it. It was simply imposed upon Britain by the world’s most hateful and poisonous media outlets, by leaning hard on our ever-compliant political leaders, who are always happy to say yes to the tabloids.

I so hope that the forthcoming Blake 200 year is one in which people hear more than William Blake was brilliant but crazy, inspiring but confusing. Help make that so! youtu.be/PNVvhX2HvZM?...

Because it’s a genocidal ethnostate expanding into the territory of its neighbours and murdering or expelling the residents, Nick. I appreciate that you don’t get to be a radio presenter unless you are willing to pretend you are an honest to god clueless moron, but that makes things a bit trickier.

Night Crow When I saw that clumsy crow Flap from a wasted tree, A shape in the mind rose up: Over the gulfs of dream Flew a tremendous bird Further and further away Into a moonless black, Deep in the brain, far back. Theodore Roethke

the ppl who were never going to vote green anyway are being awfully loud about how they're definitely not going to vote green now.

Why won't you live in it

It wasn't that long ago that this kind of talk was rightfully seen by most people as freak shit. Caring deeply about the exact boundaries of Englishness is cousin-fucker behaviour.

Here's a handy guide. If the media are saying a politician is doing socialism, they're not doing socialism. If a politician is doing socialism, the media is telling you they're doing islamic terrorism, destroying western civilization, turning your kids gay and in league with china.

one of the greats by one of the greats: Brigit Pegeen Kelly’s “The Leaving”

I get why people are asking “what have we become?” but the answer is “exactly what you’d expect from a decade and a half of the press reciting the spicier bits of Mein Kampf at the public, and our whole ruling class agreeing we need to crack down on the lesser races and their Bolshevik allies”.

This is all very awkward because Israel, as a society, is dead set on destroying or removing the Palestinians as a people and they are not shy about saying this is what they want. It makes it difficult to convince the public the people who recognised this are worse than the ones calling them names.

Ed Sheeran claiming to be 'culturally Irish' gives the vibe that he thought being Irish was pints o' Guinness and shamrocks rather than implacable multi-generational communitarian struggle against imperialism.

Like I can't stress enough that this tension is at the heart of everything and if you try and get round it your analysis is going to fall apart. You need wages to live. The people who own everything don't want to pay you. That's it. Everything else is commentary.

Your bad art is better than AI slop.

Remember, according to the sensible centrists, this is the news organisation to turn to if you think the BBC is a bit too much. Is there an option for news that *isn't* produced by screaming fascists? Heavens no. Why? Stop asking stupid questions.

The idea that classrooms are chiefly spaces for product testing, and that it is irresponsible pedagogy not to enforce this, is both cynical and vile, and “fuck off” is a cogent response from any professional educator to any non-teaching salescreep or tech-but-not-subject-matter expert who voices it.

Mladic may be dead now, but the spirit endures.

I have TWO poems in here, TWO

There is nothing to be done about the people who have been pickling their brains in a constant output of "this group of marginalised people you don't like are taking your money!" from our domestic propaganda outlets for decades. They simply have to be told to fuck off and grow up.

This is bracing, remarkable reading by Will Self about Jason Arday, naming names in blistering terms, including several prominent TERFs who joined the kicking of Arday. May Kathleen Stock and Sarah Ditum and everyone else involved never live this down.

The 2010s began with a televised public inquiry into the literal crimes of British newspapers. It ended with the same papers hounding members of the public who inconvenienced and embarrassed Boris Johnson. There’s your nutshell summary.

Issue Ten, pt. 1, is LIVE andotherpoems.com/issue-ten-pa... poems by Sapphire Allard, Tom Blake, Liz Byrne, Oliver Carmichael, Heather Hughes, Nathaniel King, Iona Lee, Jacob Mckibbin, Sarah Meehan, Sarah Rosengarten, Rosamund Taylor, Gabrielle Tse, Fiona Tracey, Mark Waldron, & Ramya Yandava

The EHRC Code of Practice comes into force this week. This is an attack on trans+ people. It is guidance, not law. It does not remove rights or make harassment legal. UCU stands in solidarity with the trans+ community. Join the lobby for trans equality, 9 September with Trans+ Solidarity Alliance

the mainstream press praising rod liddle in death are not unaware he was a bigoted pedophile, they like him for it. the people in their in-group, at the top of their hierarchy, getting away with crimes signals that the world is in order. it is a moral good, to them. the bigger the crimes the better

Bit tasteless for Robbie Williams to come dressed as Jimmy Savile

Liberals like Hinsliff are big fans of ~tough decisions~ for the peasantry, at best apathetic about policies that kill refugees, disabled people, trans people and many more. Proud to say how nice hatemongers were to *them* but then shocked the peasants don't like the people harming and killing them.

You only sue Amnesty International if you are anti-rights.

This lad makes me laugh every time I see him. I've never seen a man look 48 years old more than this man. I can't wait for him to get pancaked by a drunk dump truck driver

Thinking about war and pastoral in July – a while ago I wrote a response to ‘As the Team’s Head-Brass’ by Edward Thomas. It is based on an encounter I had as I walked the Ridgeway one summer: www.bathmagg.com/sashadugdale/

That's my hand at the start of this video. And more importantly, my poem in the book

We need to adopt as a nation a politics of kindness and empathy and peace. And to do that we do as a nation unfortunately have to put a bunch of specific people in the ground

Here's an extremely topical poem, 'Antifa', from Rachel Davies. Please submit your political poems to the Morning Star at: thursdaypoems@gmail.com We look forward to reading them. 🌿 @mstaronline.bsky.social @ruthaylett.bsky.social morningstaronline.co.uk/article/antifa

Being right about Gaza is likely to be even worse for the left than being right about the Iraq War or austerity was, because it binds together the Sensible Moderates, the right and the far right in a kind of death-pact of denial. They’ll have to stick together screaming abuse at us forever, now.