How the hell could an onion smell of a political doctrine?




Unsure about adding to the flow of words about Mrs Thatcher, I thought I'd share two unpublished poems from my upcoming book that connect to her and her ideas. You can find them on the blog I started for that here

The first is from a sequence called The Dunno Elegies (a pun on Rilke's Duino Elegiesand references the place where Thatcher did her famous 'walk in the wilderness', perhaps the closest she came, briefly, to thinking desolation might not be a viable or reasonable way of carrying on. It also draws on memories of visiting the offices of Tees Valley Regeneration, on that very land, surrounded by call centres and colleges. Is it a place or a community, beyond being a site? That we even need to ask the question is part of Thatcher's damaging legacy. 

The 2nd poem takes a more tangential and playful approach.

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