Because I do not own a rifle My loaded words must serve as bullets And when you tell me they’re not legal I’ll know exactly where to shoot it. Under the Counter-Terrorism and Security Act 2015, a statutory duty was placed on U.K. police, education, health and local authorities to prevent terrorism by identifying citizens … Continue reading Extremism
On Becoming an Immigrant (again)
On becoming an immigrant, I promise not to call everyone with a different skin colour to me ‘racist’. On becoming an immigrant, I promise not to denounce the country that has welcomed me within its borders as ‘institutionally racist’. On becoming an immigrant, I will not demand that I be described as the same nationality … Continue reading On Becoming an Immigrant (again)
An Open Letter to Nobody: The Duties of Poetry Now
It is six years since Alice Oswald’s last book was published, and although this is not an excessive time in the work of a poet, the interruption has been occasioned, of course, by the ‘lockdown’ of the UK for two years between March 2020 and April 2022 and the unprecedented changes to our society it … Continue reading An Open Letter to Nobody: The Duties of Poetry Now
Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse: The Regulatory Apparatuses of Biopower
‘The technologies at the heart of the Fourth Industrial Revolution are connected in many ways — in the way they extend digital capabilities; in the way they scale, emerge and embed themselves in our lives; in their combinatorial power; and in their potential to concentrate privilege and challenge existing governance systems.’ — Klaus Schwab, Shaping … Continue reading Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse: The Regulatory Apparatuses of Biopower
South Winds
When I met the ‘you’ of this poem in 2011 and began to write poetry again, she told me of an encounter years before when, during a period of sadness in her life, she had travelled to the north coast of Cornwall and, from a cliff top, saw a grey seal with whom she performed … Continue reading South Winds
10 Questions About Gaza
I and the public know What all schoolchildren learn, Those to whom evil is done Do evil in return. — W. H. Auden 1. What is a Jew? ‘Their barbaric acts are acts of evil. There are not two sides to these events. There is no question of balance. I stand with Israel. We stand … Continue reading 10 Questions About Gaza
Woke, Racism and the Great Reset
Among the many things the last three-and-a-half-years of cowardice and complicity have demonstrated is that the West, as an idea, is now dead. If it continues to haunt the world, it is only as an interdependent financial sector rapidly reaching the day of its reckoning, military alliances against whatever bogeyman the US identifies for ‘liberation’ … Continue reading Woke, Racism and the Great Reset
The Great Reset: Biopolitics for Stakeholder Capitalism
The Great Reset: Biopolitics for Stakeholder Capitalism — October 2023 by Simon Elmer Hardback: £32.00 Paperback: £20.00 E-book: £10.00 (please specify that you are paying for a copy of this book, and check your junkmail for the return email with the e-book) Look Inside Description When the restrictions under which we lived for two years … Continue reading The Great Reset: Biopolitics for Stakeholder Capitalism
Fight and Flight: Poems, 2012-2023
Fight and Flight: Poems 2012-2023 — 29 August, 2023 by Simon Elmer Paperback £15.00 Hardback (forthcoming) Look Inside ‘A luminescent and transporting first volume. Its range, depth and nuance — formally, thematically, cognitively and emotionally — are exceptional. It’s a work I’ll find myself returning to. And quoting!’ — Steve Venright, author of The Least … Continue reading Fight and Flight: Poems, 2012-2023
London Loves
Night, when the constellation of crane lights Rises in the West, and the thrum and hammer Of a perennially dug-up road Begins its bedtime prayers; in the glare Of diodes in car lights and council blocks, From which the orange haze of street lamps Offers something almost like relief; When the last smokers from the … Continue reading London Loves
A Communist in Hong Kong 