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© U.K. Guardian
Adrian Mitchell: Socialist, pacifist, prolific poet, novelist, essayist, children’s book author, performer, teacher, and friend.
Adrian Mitchell at Wikipedia
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Adrian Mitchell (1932-2008)
May 15, 2008, London’s Conway Hall
Listen & watch Adrian Mitchell delivering “To Whom It May Concern,” his celebrated 1965 poem decrying the American war in Vietnam; updated in 2008 to include the Anglo-American war in Iraq.
Photo © U.K. Guardian
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It was at an Anglo-American poetry festival arranged by Louis Simpson at SUNY Stonybrook in 1978 that I first met Adrian Mitchell. While I had read and savored his poems in print, I loved all the more the way he performed his work. Of all the younger British poets who were making a splash on Atlantic shores at that moment (Michael Horovitz, Jeff Nutall, Adrian Henri, Roger McGough, Fleur Adcock, Brian Patten, Tom Pickard, Tony Lane) he was clearly the most Yankee-struck. Perhaps of workingclass orgins himself, Adrian wrote poems about jazz, the blues, pop icons like Elvis Presley, and he wore on his sleeve the sympathy he reserved for the underdog and the oppressed. Always, always he spoke from the gut and straight from the heart.
Months later, when Sidgwick & Jackson brought out my novel Who Is Angelina? in the U.K., I thought it a good time for my wife Arl and me to take a vacation in London. I telephoned Adrian, who remembered me from New York. He’d having also heard me in either a Capital Radio or a BBC interview and had already telephoned my London publisher. He found us at our bed and breakfast across the street from RADA (Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts), and invited us to dinner. At his London flat. Celia [Hewitt], his actress wife, prepared a scrumptious roast beef supper. I’ll never forget how he chastised one of his daughters for not coming home punctually from the cinema she’d gone to with a friend. Another daughter, who must have been six or seven at the time, kissed each of us on the cheek before heading to her room well past bedtime.
Adrian wasn’t then aware that I wrote fiction as well as poetry. For my part, I knew him only by his poetry. We exchanged books, and took delight in one another’s spirit. We shared a love of Mark Twain, about whom he has written in depth. With the years we lost track of one another, although I always paid attention to whatever he was up to. I believe he was one of the first British poets to actually teach something called “creative writing” in the U.K. He was in demand and always on the go. I never saw his plays, but I read about them, never forgetting what a pleasing entertainer and showman he was.
When I heard that he had lost a child, one of his daughters, over here in Berkeley, CA, I was devastated. The news came through a friend of his, a woman, who telephoned me from England. “He loves you and your work,” she said. I was devastated. Was it the little girl who’d kissed us that long ago autumn night? I telephoned and left a long message on his answering machine. He and his wife weren’t taking calls, and didn’t really wish to talk about their loss.
He came to be known as “the shadow poet laureate” of the U.K. I loved the guy. He must have concealed with a smiling clownishness the pain he must have felt in the face of snide and spreading injustice, cruelty and carnage. The joy and playfulness you experience in his poems and stories are for-real. Adrian Mitchell loved life enough to tell the truth about it every chance he got. — Al Young
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TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN
I was run over by the truth one day.
Ever since the accident I’ve walked this way
So stick my legs in plaster
Tell me lies about Vietnam.
Heard the alarm clock screaming with pain,
Couldn’t find myself so I went back to sleep again
So fill my ears with silver
Stick my legs in plaster
Tell me lies about Vietnam.
Every time I shut my eyes all I see is flames.
Made a marble phone book and I carved out all the names
So coat my eyes with butter
Fill my ears with silver
Stick my legs in plaster
Tell me lies about Vietnam.
I smell something burning, hope it’s just my brains.
They’re only dropping peppermints and daisy-chains
So stuff my nose with garlic
Coat my eyes with butter
Fill my ears with silver
Stick my legs in plaster
Tell me lies about Vietnam.
Where were you at the time of the crime?
Down by the Cenotaph drinking slime
So chain my tongue with whisky
Stuff my nose with garlic
Coat my eyes with butter
Fill my ears with silver
Stick my legs in plaster
Tell me lies about Vietnam.
You put your bombers in, you put your conscience out,
You take the human being and you twist it all about
So scrub my skin with women
Chain my tongue with whisky
Stuff my nose with garlic
Coat my eyes with butter
Fill my ears with silver
Stick my legs in plaster
Tell me lies about Vietnam.
© 1965, 2008 by Adrian Mitchell
CELIA CELIA
When I am sad and weary,
When I think all hope has gone,
When I walk along High Holborn
I think of you with nothing on
© 1980 by Adrian Mitchell
MY LITERARY CAREER SO FAR
As I prowled through Parentheses
I met an Robin and a Owl
My Grammarboots they thrilled like bees
My Vowelhat did gladly growl
Tis my delight each Friedegg Night
To chomp a Verbal Sandwich
Scots Consonants light up my Pants
And marinade my Heart in Language
Alphabet Soup was all my joy!
From Dreadfast up to Winnertime
I swam, a naked Pushkinboy
Up wodka vaterfalls of rhyme
And reached the summit of Blue Howl
To find a shining Suit of Words
And joined an Robin and a Owl
In good Duke Ellington’s Band of Birds
© 2008 by Adrian Mitchell
(This was Adrian Mitchell’s last poem, penned two days before he died on 20 December 2008)
More poems by Adrian Mitchell for eye and ear
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Obituaries | Tributes
David Walsh: To the Memory of Adrian Mitchell (World Socialist Web Site)
Kaya Burgess: Adrian Mitchell, ‘Shadow Poet Laureate,’ dies, aged 76 (TimesOnline, U.K.)
John Burnside: Adrian Mitchell — a poet who made things happen (UK Guardian)
William Grimes: Adrian Mitchell, British Poetry’s Voice of the Left, Dies at 76 (New York Times)
Watch Adrian Mitchell at YouTube
This performance of Mitchell’s powerful poem, “To Whom It May Concern,” was filmed in London’s Royal Albert Hall on June 11, 1965. It is as relevant today — if you change the country concerned from Vietnam to Iraq.
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© BayTaper.com
Frazier O’Leary
NO HIGH SCHOOL LEFT BEHIND
