From the New Statesman online:
"I shall vote Labour"
Posted by Alice Gribbin - 06 December 2011 10:20
Christopher Logue, whose poems were published by the New Statesman in the
Fifties and Sixties, dies at the age of 85.
Christopher Logue in 1958, age 31 (Photo: Getty Images)
The poet Christopher Logue, who died last Friday at the age of 85, was best
known for his project -- which spanned fifty years -- to adapt Homer's Iliad as
an epic, modernist poem. Logue's War Music appeared as five print volumes and
the final collection, published by Faber as Logue's Homer: Cold Calls: War Music
Continued: Vol 1, won the 2006 Whitbread Poetry Prize and long overdue
recognition for the English poet.
Unlike the modernist greats whose attachments to the Greek classics were coupled
with deep rooted Conservatism -- think Eliot, Pound -- Logue was of the loosely-
liberal British Poetry Revival movement and an active leftie throughout his
life.
In 1960, Logue became an original member of the Committee of 100, the anti-war
group set up by Bertrand Russell to voice their opposition to the British
government's nuclear policy. From the late Fifties through the Seventies he
contributed to Private Eye and the New Statesman, participated in CND marches
and lead social programmes to bring poetry to workers on the factory floors.
In March 1966, after just 17 months in office, sitting prime minister Harold
Wilson held a general election and campaigned under the slogan "You know Labour
Government Works". The same year, Logue wrote the following poem. "I shall vote
Labour" was first published by the New Statesman, and that spring the British
public re-elected Prime Minister Wilson, increasing the Labour government
majority from just four seats to a comfortable 96.
I shall vote Labour
I shall vote Labour because
God votes Labour.
I shall vote Labour to protect
the sacred institution of The Family.
I shall vote Labour because
I am a dog.
I shall vote Labour because
upper-class hoorays annoy me in expensive restaurants.
I shall vote Labour because
I am on a diet.
I shall vote Labour because if I don't
somebody else will:
AND
I shall vote Labour because if one person
does it
everybody will be wanting to do it.
I shall vote Labour because if I do not vote Labour
my balls will drop off.
I shall vote Labour because
there are too few cars on the road.
I shall vote Labour because I am
a hopeless drug addict.
I shall vote Labour because
I failed to be a dollar millionaire aged three.
I shall vote Labour because Labour will build
more maximum security prisons.
I shall vote Labour because I want to shop
in an all-weather precinct stretching from Yeovil to Glasgow.
I shall vote Labour because
the Queen's stamp collection is the best
in the world.
I shall vote Labour because
deep in my heart
I am a Conservative.
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