Less than a week to go until I arrive in Gothenburg for the last leg of this Swedish book tour. I’m at the Gothenburg Fringe Festivan on 7/8/9th Sept. more details here: https://www.gbgfringe.com/events/the-mthr-trilogy/ come see me! Or tell your Gothenburg-based friends to come see me! Or give me a friendly boost. MWAH 💋 #spokenword #performance #poet #scifi #writer #novel #fieldrecording #soundartist @bookstadon

Today in Labor History August 16, 1819: Police attacked unemployed workers demonstrating in St. Peter's Field, Manchester, England. When the cavalry charged, at least 18 people died and over 600 were injured. The event became know as the Peterloo Massacre, named for the Battle of Waterloo, where many of the massacre victims had fought just four years earlier. Following the Napoleonic Wars there was an acute economic slump, terrible unemployment and crop failures, all worsened by the Corn Laws, which kept bread prices high. Only 11% of adult males had the vote. Radical reformers tried to mobilize the masses to force the government to back down. The movement was particularly strong in the north-west, where the Manchester Patriotic Union organized the mass rally for Peter’s Field. As soon as the meeting began, local magistrates tried to arrest working class radical, Henry Hunt, and several others. Hunt inspired the Chartist movement, which came shortly after Peterloo.

John Lees, who later died from wounds he received at the massacre, had been present at the Battle of Waterloo. Before his death, he said that he had never been in such danger as at Peterloo: "At Waterloo there was man to man but there it was downright murder." In the wake of the massacre, the government passed the Six Acts, to suppress any further attempts at radical reform. The event also led indirectly to the founding of the Manchester Guardian newspaper.

Percy Bysshe Shelley wrote about the massacre in his poem, “The Masque of Anarchy.” The authorities censored it until 1832, ten years after his death. Mike Leigh’s 2018 film Peterloo is an excellent portrayal of the massacre, and the events leading up to it. Many writers have written novels about Peterloo, including the relatively recent “Song of Peterloo,” by Carolyn O'Brien, and “All the People,” Jeff Kaye. However, perhaps the most important is Isabella Banks's 1876 novel, “The Manchester Man,” since she was there when it happened and included testimonies from people who were involved.

#WorkingClass #LaborHistory #Peterloo #waterloo #unemployed #poverty #FreeSpeech #massacre #anarchism #poetry #Literature #books #poet #author #writer #fiction @bookstadon

Today in Labor History August 4, 1792: Poet Percy Bysshe Shelley was born. He promoted freedom of speech, ending aristocratic and clerical privilege, and equal distribution of income and wealth. He was also a vegetarian, advocate for free love and an atheist, who wrote about the link between organized religion and social repression. His poems and political writings were admired by Marx, Gandhi and others. His poem The Mask of Anarchy (1819) was the first modern work to support nonviolent protest. It was recited by students at the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 and by protesters in Tahrir Square during the Egyptian revolution of 2011. Shelley wrote The Mask of Anarchy following the Peterloo Massacre (8/16/1819), when the British cavalry charged into a crowd of around 60,000 people who had gathered to demand political representation, killing 13. He was married to, Mary Shelley, who wrote Frankenstein.

The Mask of Anarchy:

Rise, like lions after slumber
In unvanquishable number!
Shake your chains to earth like dew
Which in sleep had fallen on you:
Ye are many—they are few!

#WorkingClass #LaborHistory #anarchism #FreeSpeach #poetry #poet #marx #FreeLove #frankenstein #PercyByssheShelley #protest #demonstration #Revolution #nonviolence

Today in Writing History, July 19, 1875: Alice Dunbar Nelson, American poet and activist was born. She was a prominent part of the Harlem Renaissance. She published her first collection of short stories and poems, “Violets and Other Tales,” in 1895. In 1910s, she co-founded the Equal Suffrage Study Club and was a field organizer for the woman's suffrage movement. In the 1920s-1930s, she was very active in the movements for African Americans' and women's rights, campaigned for the passage of the Dyer Anti-Lynching Bill and spoke in support of the Scottsboro defendants."

#WorkingClass #LaborHistory #BlackLivesMater #racism #lynching #feminism #WomensRights #Poet #poetry #BlackMastadon @bookstadon

Today in Labor History July 12, 1919: Erich Mühsam was sentenced to 15 years in prison for his role in the Bavarian Workers' Councils uprising. He was an antimilitarist, anarchist, essayist, poet and playwright and one of the leading agitators for a federated Bavarian Soviet Republic. He also did cabaret performances during the Weimar Republic that satirized Hitler, who was, coincidentally, released from jail under the same amnesty that freed Mühsam in 1924. Mühsam was tortured and murdered in the Oranienburg concentration camp in 1934.

#WorkingClass #LaborHistory #anarchism #nazis #fascism #antifascism #bavaria #soviet #prison #torture #ConcentrationCamp #execution #hitler #ErichMühsam #poet #poetry #playwright #writing @bookstadon

Today in Writing History July 12, 1904: Pablo Neruda, Chilean poet, diplomat, and Nobel Prize laureate was born. He started writing poetry in his early teens and was mentored by future Nobel laureate Gabriela Mistral, who ran his school. In 1924, at the age of 20, he published his second book of poetry, “Veinte Poemas de Amor y un Cancion Desesperada.” This book sold millions of copies and is still the best-selling book of Spanish poetry ever. Gabriel Garcia Marquez called him the greatest poet of the 20th century.

Neruda served as a Chilean diplomat in Spain during the Spanish Civil War, where he became radicalized, particularly by the execution of his friend Garcia Lorca, by Francisco Franco. After World War II, he served as a Chilean senator for the Communist Party, but had to go into hiding in 1948, when Communism was declared illegal in Chile. Neruda was hospitalized with cancer just as Pinochet was taking power through a coup d’etat and died in 1973. Many accused Pinochet of poisoning him, but a 2013 international forensic team determined that he died of prostate cancer.

#WorkingClass #LaborHistory #poetry #poet #PabloNeruda #fascism #communism #Chile #spain #NobelPrize @bookstadon

hi there y’all ! here’s my mastodon #introduction !

my name is xalli (though i go by many other names as well), and i use she/him and zie/hir pronouns ! i’m #butch & #twospirit and am #disabled

i’m a young #writer and #poet and work largely with magical realism and surrealism ! i also really love #zines and #horror and i’m pursuing both #ecology and being a #midwife ! i’m also an #anarchist & #socialist though i mostly focus my energy in #abolition and #MutualAid !

nice to meet y’all 🥰

"No one owns the #water.
No one owns the #land.
No one owns the #oceans.
No one owns the #sand.
These are given by our mother.
The #planet provides for #free.
Only by the hands of the #greedy,
Does the #Earth require a #fee.
— #Poet Christopher"

Today in Writing History June 4, 1472: Aztec poet, warrior and king Nezahualcoyotl died. He died roughly fifty years before the conquest and his poems were first put onto paper one hundred years after his death. He wrote in the Classical Nahuatl language. Some of his poems were: In chololiztli (The Flight), Ma zan moquetzacan (Stand Up!), Nitlacoya (I Am Sad), Xopan cuicatl (Song of Springtime) and Xon Ahuiyacan (Be Joyful).

#aztec #Poet #mexico #poetry @bookstadon

Today in Labor History May 31, 1819: Poet Walt Whitman was born. Whitman published his first and most famous collection of poems, Leaves of Grass, in 1855, using his own money. It was criticized as obscene for its sensuality. During the Civil War, he volunteered in hospitals caring for the wounded. Many believe Whitman was gay or bisexual, based on his writings, though it is disputed by some historians. Oscar Wilde met Whitman in the United States in 1882 and told the homosexual-rights activist George Cecil Ives that Whitman's sexual orientation was beyond question—"I have the kiss of Walt Whitman still on my lips." Whitman is considered by many to be Americas first and greatest poet. He inspired many who came after him, including Ezra Pound, Langston Hughes, Kerouac, Ginsberg, Ferlinghetti, Gary Snyder and June Jordan.

#WorkingClass #LaborHistory #WaltWhitman #CivilWar #poetry #poet #writer #lgbtq #gay #obscenity #OscarWilde #AllanGinsberg @bookstadon

Today in Writing History May 7, 1861: Indian poet and playwright Rabindranath Tagore was born. Also known as the Bard of Bengal, Tagore was the first non-European to win the Nobel Prize in Literature. He was also an anti-imperialist and supported Indian nationalism. In 1916, Indian expatriates tried to assassinate him in San Francisco.

#indian #Poet #playwright #RabindranathTagore #NobelPrize #assassination #Nationalism #SanFrancisco #antiimperialism

Today in Labor History February 27, 1812: Poet Lord Byron gave his first address as a member of the House of Lords. In his speech, he spoke out in support of Luddite violence against industrialism in his home county of Nottinghamshire. He spoke specifically against the Frame Breaking Act, which gave the death penalty to anyone guilty of breaking a machine. The state hanged 60-70 Luddites during the time the law was on the books. However, most of the time, the courts used other laws to convict them.

#WorkingClass #LaborHistory #DeathPenalty #hanging #luddites #LordByron #poet #poetry @bookstadon

Today in Labor History February 23, 1903: Jean-Baptiste Clement died. Clement was a socialist and Paris Communard, poet, singer and composer of the famous song, “The Time of Cherries.” He was one of the last on the barricades during the Commune. He escaped and fled to England. The French authorities condemned him to death, in absentia. They later granted him amnesty and he returned to France in 1879. He helped found the Revolutionary Socialist Workers Party in 1890. Paris has since named schools and a street after him.

#WorkingClass #LaborHistory #ParisCommune #poet #Revolutionary #singer #JeanBaptisteClement #barricades #prison #socialism #DeathPenalty #amnesty

Today in Labor History February 17, 1905: Ivan Kalyayev assassinated Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich in Moscow. He was arrested at the scene, convicted of murder and hanged. Kalyayev was a poet and a member of the Socialist-Revolutionary Party.

#WorkingClass #LaborHistory #russia #Revolutionary #socialism #moscow #Poet #assassination #DeathPenalty

Today in Labor History February 10, 1898: Marxist playwright Bertolt Brecht was born. Brecht was a doctor, poet and playwright. He fled the Nazis only to be persecuted in the U.S. by HUAC during the Cold War. He is most well-know for his play, “The Three Penny Opera.” He also wrote “Mother Courage and Her Children” and “The Days of the Commune,” about the Paris Commune. Additionally, he wrote poetry and composed the lyrics to many of the songs performed in his plays, like “Mack the Knife” and “Alabama Song” (AKA Whiskey Bar).

https://youtu.be/6orDcL0zt34

#workingclass #LaborHistory #nazis #huac #Anticommunist #witchhunt #BertoltBrecht #marxist #Poet #playwright #ParisCommune @bookstadon

Today in Labor History February 4, 1900: Jacques Prévert was born (1900-1977). Prevert was a poet, surrealist and libertarian socialist who glorified the spirit of rebellion & revolt.

Excerpt from “Song in the Blood”
There are great puddles of blood on the world
Where’s it going all this spilled blood
Murder’s blood. . . war’s blood. . .
Misery’s blood. . .
And the blood of men tortured in prisons. . .
The blood of children calmly tortured by their papa
And their mama. . .
And the blood of men whose heads bleed in
Padded cells
And the roofer’s blood
When the roofer slips and falls from the roof

#workingclass #LaborHistory #prévert #Ferlinghetti #antiwar #socialism #poetry #Poet #surrealism #rebellion #revolt @bookstadon

I live with (and love) a #poet, he reads me #poetry in the evenings. I talk his ear off during supper. We write sitting next to each other.

learning outside the #institution means selecting your own reading materiel. You can read every word, or not. You can take notes, or not. You can discuss your reading, or not.

The #book of #poems we are reading now is:

Artaud the Mômo
by Antonin Artaud (2020)

Died in 1948. nine years of incarceration in French psychiatric institution. He was #mad as #mad can be. I love it but it may not be your thang. I suggest reading the following review/background first.

Madness, Civilization, and the Poetry of Violence in Artaud the Mômo

https://chireviewofbooks.com/2020/10/26/madness-civilization-and-the-poetry-of-violence-in-artaud-the-momo/

#MadMastodon #MadMovement #MadStudies

Today in Labor History January 11, 1804: The Sussex Examiner reported that the English authorities tried poet & painter William Blake for saying “Damn the king and damn his soldiers.” Blake was both religious and hostile to the Church & organized religion. His poetry often embodied rebellion against class power. He disdained the blighting and impoverishing effects of the Industrial Revolution. He despised slavery and was a proponent of free love. Some consider him an early proponent of what would later be called anarchism.

#workingclass #LaborHistory #poetry #Poet #williamblake #prison #freespeech #anarchism #slavery #religion #rebellion
@bookstadon

I used to feel bad about my poems not getting much engagement, on multiple platforms, over the years. Then I started following the poetry tag here on the fediverse and noticed many poets don't get much engagement.

And then I thought to myself...it's not that they don't like *my* poems, it's that they don't like *all* poems. This lead me to a great fit of laughter. Woe is the bad poet who assumes it's the medium and not themselves.

Although, I must admit, the realization was freeing. Does it matter whether it's the poet or poetry that's bad if no one likes it just the same? My aim to express myself is now my only metric.

#poetry
#poems
#poet

I guess I should make an #Introduction !

I'm Lucy (they/them). I'm a queer aroace anarchist (also a lover of alliteration apparently). I'm currently getting my MA in #Classics and specifically am interested in Ancient Magic, sex/gender, and digital humanities. I love to make threads about the Greek Magical Papyri and the wild stuff I find in it. Outside of #academia I'm an occasional #poet and knitter and even more occasionally a witch.

You can also find me on twitter @/defixionesss (same as here).