The Shadow Knows: Poems 2000-2004 - Softcover

Mitchell, Adrian

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1852246642 ISBN 13: 9781852246648

Publisher: Bloodaxe Books Ltd, 2004

Synopsis

The official elegy for Princess Margaret was the last straw. There had to be an antidote: a poet who would stalk the powerful, the pretentious and the sycophantic. The socialist magazine Red Pepper invited Adrian Mitchell to don the dreaded costume of The Shadow Poet Laureate and write regular people's republican poems for their columns. At a secret midnight ceremony he was decked in the cloak, fedora and blue suede shoes which are the garb of the Shadow. Then he kept popping his head up where he was least wanted by some but most needed by the rest of us, appearing on radio and TV and other platforms to speak for the other side, restoring a radical, subversive voice to the public face of British poetry. Now Adrian Mitchell - in his first new book of poems for four years - tells us not just what the Shadow knows about poetry and politics, peace and war, but what the Man behind the Shadow feels about love and death, and everything else in life from parents and children to dogs, asteroids and the Tellytubbies. Adrian Mitchell is one of Europe's bestselling poets. His poetry's simplicity, clarity, passion and humour show his allegiance to a vital, popular tradition embracing William Blake as well as the ballads and the blues. His most nakedly political poems - about war, Vietnam, prisons and racism - have become part of the folklore of the Left, sung and recited at demonstrations and mass rallies. Now out of print, the whole collection is included in Come On Everybody: Poems 1953-2008.

About this title

About the Author

Adrian Mitchell (1932-2008) was a prolific poet, playwright and children’s writer. His poetry’s simplicity, clarity, passion and humour show his allegiance to a vital, popular tradition embracing William Blake as well as the Border Ballads and the blues. His most nakedly political poems – about nuclear war, Vietnam, prisons and racism – became part of the folklore of the Left, sung and recited at demonstrations and mass rallies. After Allison & Busby stopped publishing poetry, he brought his work to Bloodaxe. Adrian Mitchell’s Greatest Hits: His 40 Golden Greats (1991) was followed by Heart on the Left: Poems 1953-1984 (1997), Blue Coffee: Poems 1985-1996 (1996), All Shook Up: Poems 1997-2000 (2000), The Shadow Knows: Poems 2000-2004 (2004) and the posthumous Tell Me Lies: Poems 2005-2008 (2009), and then by his retrospective Come On Everybody: Poems 1953-2008 (2012). His collected poems for children, Umpteen Pockets (Orchard Books), and Shapeshifters, his versions of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, illustrated by Alan Lee (Frances Lincoln), were both published in 2009. Born in London in 1932, Adrian Mitchell worked as a journalist from 1955 to 1966, when he became a full-time writer. He gave many hundreds of readings throughout the world in theatres, colleges, pubs, prisons, streets, public transport, rallies, cellars, clubs and schools of all kinds. Many of his plays and stage adaptations were performed at the National Theatre as well as by the Royal Shakespeare Company and other theatre companies. In 2002, the socialist magazine Red Pepper dubbed him Shadow Poet Laureate and asked him to write regular republican poems for their columns. 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.

Edition details

• Publisher: Bloodaxe Books Ltd
• Publication date: 2004
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1852246642
• ISBN 13: 9781852246648
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 136