MDG: As a social poet do you feel like a lot of people get turned off by social poetry?

JGH: All poetry is social in a way. From Blake to Ferlinghetti poets have drawn their powers from the injustice of poverty and war and the corruption of leaders. Sometimes social poetry can paint a dark picture that depresses people. That is why it is important that social poets also write poetry that inspires and lifts the human spirit. We can do this by being brave enough to express our views openly, views others may hold but are not confident enough to express for themselves. This is leadership after all. Mixing humor and politics is another way of making social poetry interesting. Having said all the above, I think most people, in my experience, that dislike social poetry are usually conservative in nature anyway. They need disturbing from their sleep walk and educating. Other than that, stuff um!

MDG: Speaking as a social poet what are your feelings on the state of the world?

JGH: Money is the green snake in the garden friends. Its eating the poor, poisoning the mind and now its beginning to eat the garden itself. Politicians have betrayed us time and time again. They lack imagination and can no longer inspire people to change society. There is a growing social poetry scene in the UK because people want to express their views and rage against the machine and give courage to young people and explore with them their fears and pains and exploitation. Poets can be revolutionaries in this sense. The American Empire is busy changing the world into an American system of secret-colonies. Local cultures are being bashed into a American Capitalist shape, making markets for US goods and services. But hey, the same thing is happening inside America. We the people are being divided against ourselves into warring groups so that the rich can stuff money down their throats. The trick being played on us is this, we have been led to believe that we are nations when we are in fact one species. But change is coming, heads are lifting and people are understanding more. One day our species will stand together and not turn up for the rich mans wars or their racist divisions. Until then we'll keep pointing out their nakedness and providing anti-dotes for their green snakes poison.

MDG: Who was the first poet that you really got into?

JGH: William Blake did it for me. He was writing at a time when capitalism was busy being born. He watched as people were herded into the stinking cities and worked to death in Cotton Mills or forced into fighting colonial wars or into subjugating local uprising. And yet his imagination grappled with this by using visionary poems and prophetic verse. He saw the deep change happening within the human spirit as the capitalist machine commoditized everything from love to hate, from life to death, from childhood to old age, from innocence to experience. He wrote about the French Revolution and the American Revolution, he warned Tom Paine that his life was in danger. Tom Paine fled to France. Before Freud was born he explored the Id and the Ego and the role of sexuality in human beings inner lives. He still makes me cry. I trust a poet who can do that, someone writing hundreds of years ago that is still capable of making me shed tears of joy is a powerful writer I think. He never traveled outside of London in his whole life and yet here he is, all over the internet, in every University library in the world. That's what I call using your imagination.

MDG: Tell us about Citizen 32.

JGH: We set up Citizen32 to provide artists with an outlet for their social poetry and art. The first issue was themed on War & Peace. It included work by Jack Hirschman and Allen Cohen and Alan Pinter (who had just won the Nobel Prize for literature). Up to now we have published 5 issues, always themed on social issues. Since then we have published three poet laureates and two Nobel prize winners. Our next issue is going to be on 'Race'. My idea was to mix big names with new writers, side by side, so that light is shed on little known writers. I also include reviews and interviews. The next issue includes an interview with Lawrence Ferlinghetti for example. The magazine is based in Manchester, UK. We pay trade union rates of pay to all writers and artists. The other editors are Dave Toomer (Freelance Reporter) and Christine McAlpine (Teacher). Citizen32 runs poetry nights to launch the magazine, recently George Wallace from New York launched our Class issue along with The Poetry Chicks from Northern Ireland. Citizen32 toured Northern Ireland earlier in the year to great applauses. We have now branched into book publication.Citizen32 published a local poet called Jackie Hagan and plans to publish more working class poets. I have just come back from a Citizen32 retreat for writers and artists. It was set on the Isle of Arran, Scotland and was a great success. We hope to be running it every year. We plan to tour America and Europe in the near future. I have been asked to read in New York and San Francisco, I'm really looking forward to reading in America. It has produced the greatest poets of this century, for me. All this in only two years. Hopefully we can keep it up, our government is cutting funds so that it can stage the Olympics so we have our fingers crossed. Wish us luck folks.

MDG: You are pretty much a professional poet and editor of that correct?

JGH: Well, I'm professional in the sense that being a poet is my reason for living. But apart from an occasional editorial fee & the odd book royalty once every blue moon, I live on state benefit. I'm not ashamed to say that I am a poor person, in terms of money. I say this not out of self pity, but because I feel it's important to show people that we can write, be published, found magazines, stage tours, pay other people union rates of pay, perform poetry, hold workshops and talk politics without being loaded. Hey, don't get me wrong, loaded would kinda help. But the imagination is more powerful than gold to me. I have been published in over 50 different publications and had 300 poems published, plus two poetry books published over the years and appeared in anthologies. But it is the company of revolutionary poets and the warmth of audiences and readers that is the real kick for me. At the moment I am looking for a publisher in America for a chap book of political poetry I've been writing, hopefully if that happens I could tour the US a bit to promote it. Only possible of course if I get a travel grant from my local Arts Council. So, yes I am a professional poet and a professional editor. It's just that I don't get paid most of the time. But there again folks, do you know any rich poets?

MDG: How did you get involved with the Drexel Worldwide Poetry Project?

JGH: Being part of Drexel Worldwide Poetry Project was a great honor for me as a committed internationalist. I performed at a Manchester poetry venue called Verberate and the organizer made a recording of the night. Later he released a CD of the night to raise funds for refugees, it went on sale and did quite well. He also submitted the CD to Drexel University and they said they wanted buy my poems 'And still I cannot wake from their war' and 'The Etc Poem' to represent Europe in their Worldwide Poetry Project. When I saw the other poets involved I was proud to appear on the site. I refused the payment and asked them to use it refugees.

MDG: Standard outsider writer question. What do you think makes an outsider writer?

JGH: All poets outside of capitalisms power structures are outsider writers to some extent. But seeing I have been honored to named an Outsider writer I'd like to quote George Wallace, New York, Suffolk County, Poet Laureates comments in his forward to my last book "See No Evil". "In these early days of the 21st century; in these days of Cookie Cutter MFAs, McPoems and MTV-style performance poseurs; in these sad, terrible wondrous days, it is reassuring to read the poetry of John Hall, writings that remind us that the generative power of poetry comes not from the formalists and the faux counter-culturalists inside the academy, but from the people standing outside the academy's lustrous gates. You're on the street now. Welcome to John Hall's world. John Hall's poetry is the bare-knuckle news"

Instead of a review, this is the forward to John's book by George Wallace:

INTRODUCTION By George Wallace to John G.Hall's "See No Evil"

Nicolas Calas once wrote that Proletarian Art was quite opposed to modernism in art, which he asserted was infused with "bourgeois preoccupations of a dying world." Calas argued for an engaged art, a muscular aesthetic that would address issues of social importance, rather than to dabble in bourgeois dalliances. "What depends on us is to oppose," he wrote. "To their games: our works. To their books with no conclusions: our preaching. To their endless analyses: powerful syntheses. To their cosmopolitan romances: our social positions."
In a sense, John Hall strives in these poems to follow the Calas Dictum: "to drown the endless psychological whisper" of contemporary poetry with the roar of his own social and class consciousness, to rage at economic and political subjugation, to lament alienation and pain. "We are still here, the English/slave owners enslaved at home..." he writes, in the very fine poem 'The English Colony,' "...led through the market place/by the ring through our nose."
From this confrontational modality we might turn to the thoughts of Aleksandr Bogdanov, who asserted that Proletarian Art is a young art, an art in its infancy, an art notable not for its craftsmanship but for the purity of its contents, imbued with strivings, ideals and ways of thinking belonging to the working class, with all its triumphs and sorrows, with all its raw joys and sudden epiphanies.
In a sense John Hall strives to follow the Bogdanov Dictum too. To follow the path of the
Proletarian Poet on a journey of discovery to some precious place which is pure in content, and generative in spirit. Even at his most intimate and self-ironic, at his most lighthearted and casual, Hall reveals himself as a spokesperson for this raucous power, rich in tenderness yet as fierce and unflinching before the fading flame of the post-industrial blast furnace as the toughest bloke on the socially-conscious block.
There is elegance and economy of expression to be found in this book. There's humor and grit in this book. There's iconoclasm and outright praise. There's fire and anger and violence and sexuality and historic insight. And there is a bottom line in this book too, a yin/yang realization which it wouldn't hurt for anyone to be reminded of: the recognition that the world can be 'piss stained and glorious at the same time.' Indeed, we are reminded once again that poetry is news that stays news.
At the end of the day, it is not for the sophistications of craftsmanship that we turn its pages -- but for the pleasure of experiencing something more pure: the musings of the untutored heart. In these early days of the 21st century; in these days of Cookie Cutter MFAs, McPoems and MTV-style performance poseurs; in these sad, terrible wondrous days, it is reassuring to read the poetry of John Hall, writings that remind us that the generative power of poetry comes not from the formalists and the faux counter-culturalists inside the academy, but from the people standing outside the academy's lustrous gates. You're on the street now. Welcome to John Hall's world. John Hall's poetry is the bare-knuckle
news.

George Wallace
New York
November 2006

And an intro to his first book by Jack Hirshman:  

"John Hall’s poetry has the gritty edge of a contemporary visionary in active development. He’s not afraid to let the poem happen to him as experience & he’s not imprisoned by form but open to its changing demands. Whether writing of broken heartedness or dealing with experiences of a more directly political nature, his poems are always directed towards the future. So that outrage is never far from rage, nor affirmation from bitter actuality. This is an important book by one of England’s most important younger poets."

Jack Hirschman – San Francisco poet Laureate,author of “Front Line-Selected Poems” Poet & activist.

"The Drowning Fish" & is available from Amazon.com http://johnghall.moonfruit.com/

And three poems by John:

The English Colony.

We are still here, the English

slave owners enslaved at home,

led through the market place

by the ring through our nose.

Some throw stones, some spit

others ape us, others make bids.

The young open their guide books

while the old reminisce. Ah! The English !

Our name sticks in their throats,

relic of Cornish fog & dressed stone

dank from a thousand years of rain.

Now old glory bubbles through our taste buds ,

green hills dusted by Texan frosts, England

dressed by Betsy Ross & silent listening stations.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Bush & Blair Ltd.

The slums acoustics are sung into sweetness

by crack queens made clean & dumb pimps made kings

all dollar forced american marching bands of bandits

goose stepping all the way from ancient Memphis.

Sergeant Rock of Guantanamo Bay showed me a post card of Chicago

trying hard to be New York, trying hard to be Berlin in the 1930's

trying hard to be Imperial Rome, trying hard to be the capital of Hades.

Every night I see my best northern birthplace burning in the west

becoming a windy city its people ashen victims of another empires state

a foolish nations flag flying from the twin towers of their shining lies.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

American Atlantis

Plato saw forward,

wrote back words

of the Isle of Wars,

its jazz lighthouses shining

beneath the blacks & blues

of water blessed by mexico,

property is saved from human surplus values

by bulldogs with buckshot and shooting stars,

we are the drifting wood from their war chests

smelling of factory closures and charities soup

first world multiplied by natures twisting third,

tanks not boats uniforms not blankets

bullets for breakfast & lunch & supper,

an old Orleans moon sets on a new venice

it's jazzed beams splashing all earths

places of terror & tortures, swing out

the life boat, pass out the day's ration,

we are all in the same hope

lest you forget & rock us out

we are all overboard of love,

even now poets tie themselves

good and tight to the main sails

even now I can hear their sirens,

the Isle's of War calling sweetly

for new hurricanes of technology

to sweep the poor from the earth.

John G.Hall(C)2005

Last update : 01-07-2007 12:13

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