I can’t imagine there to be a poet who so enraged those in authority, that long after his death, his naked statue would have its testicles removed. Yet this was the lot of Percy Bysshe Shelley. As the late Paul Foot explains in his classic book, Red Shelley. “The naked Shelley was the subject of much sport each summer was at Oxford [University]. As a climax to what is known as Eights Week, the future leaders of the nation would mourn yet another disaster for the University College First Eight by squeezing between the bars of Shelley’s cage, and wreaking havoc on his statue. ‘We’ve got Shelley’s balls!’ was the plummy cry of triumph which would echo through the quadrangles at three or four in the morning.”

I don’t suppose that the Notting Hill posh heads of Cameron, Johnson, and Gove are great fans of Shelley, or similar modern poets so resistant to their right wing elitist values. Well, fortunately their short-lived bubble of power (remember they were only solely in office for a year), has been self-punctured. However, there is little to celebrate from such a demise; the country is in its greatest level of uncertainty for many years with Brexit, and the grip of the Right is still vice-like, especially with the battle raging between the Labour People’s Front and the People’s Front of Labour.

Poets have begun to respond to this exit from Europe and resultant political dislocation, with online magazines and anthologies from the likes of Well Versed (as usual), The Stare’s Nest, The Bogman’s Cannon, New Boots and Pantisocracies, and I Am Not a Silent Poet. Steve Pottinger is a stalwart of political poetry, whether with poems against tax avoiding corporations, or as with his poem here, Stabberjocky, holding power to account in the most surreal and satirical way. This reworking of Lewis Carroll’s Jabberwocky is a real classic in the making. So much so, that if Steve was to ever have statue made of him, I am sure that descendants of Shelley’s stealers would be on the lookout for Pottinger’s crown jewels.

 

“Steve Pottinger has gigged the length and breadth of the country, in pubs and clubs, at poetry nights and festivals. But that doesn’t really tell you anything. He loves words, loves people more, and enjoys poetry which makes him smile, or think, or want to man the barricades. When not standing behind a microphone or in front of an audience, he can often be found down the pub. He hopes you enjoy his work.” You can find out more about Steve at http://stevepottinger.co.uk; twitter @BigStevePoet. The poem Birmingham to London by Coach is from Steve’s latest collection, “more bees, bigger bonnets”.

 

 

Stabberjocky

(with apologies to Lewis Carroll)

‘Twas Brexit, and the slithy Gove
did frottercrutch in dwarfish glee;
he snicker-snacked the Camerove,
Machiavelliadastardly.

Beware the stabberjock, my son!
The empty eyes, the robo-glint!
who fellobrates the Murdocrone
the Ruperturtle übergimp!

He pallerised the BoJo cloon
they chummed upon their sunderbus
emblazoned it with fibberoons
and bambulluntruthoozled us.

The tousled toddler slaughterchopped,
his destiplans an Eton mess,
the slubbergubby gollumgove
a shadowhand of viciousness.

O gipperchund! And vomberblast!
The skitterchit of slick and sly
the snicker-snack of backstablades
the scrabblage to ruthlerise.

The bubberchut of charismissed
the turdletruck of banalbore
is patterfrondled on the head
a pawn upon a checkerboard.

Beware the stabberjock, my son!
The empty eyes, the robo-glint!
who fellobrates the Murdocrone
the Ruperturtle übergimp.