Inspiring Older Readers
Adrian Mitchell’s Poetry and Protest: To Whom It May Concern (Tell me lies about Vietnam)
This weekend the USA’s most controversial President since ‘Tricky Dicky’ Nixon paid a visit to the UK. Cossetted and smuggled-in to avoid popular protest against his visit, Donald Trump and his incontinent mouth managed to toss a couple of unwanted hand-grenades into the political space, swanned around for a while with Queenie before buzzing off to his golf hotel in Scotland to ‘prepare’ for his meeting with Russia’s pin-up boy, Vladimir Putin.
Trump specialises in trying to manipulate reality by defiant disregard for fact and by assertion of his own will – for him truth is only ever what he wants it to be. This is not a man who can be argued with or made open to reason and challenging his capacity to warp discussion and debate can’t be done through the traditional medium of political rhetoric. It is at times like this that we need our very best writers, artists and poets to step forward and provide us with a countervailing view of the world that will give us another, alternative perspective.
As I was thinking about this over the past couple of days I remembered how I first discovered Adrian Mitchell, a poet with a message to deliver who had a big influence on politicising me. I first came across Mitchell when his work was included in the Penguin Modern Poets collection (number 22) which was published in 1973 and when I had just completed my first year at university. His urgent, direct, witty and accessible poetry went straight into my circulatory system and he seemed to me, at the time, a hero speaking truth to power on my behalf.
I read and reread his 1968 poem, To Whom It May Concern (Tell me lies about Vietnam) and I foolishly mistook his fantastic ability to speak directly to the reader as simplicity. I was even dim enough to think I could probably do that myself – but, of course I couldn’t because it’s really skilful and carefully constructed. Something this good needs talent.
To Whom It May Concern (Tell me lies about Vietnam)
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.
What is astonishing about the poem is its timeless relevance. There has never been a time or age when the message about politics, politicians, war and the public’s capacity to turn a blind eye has not been legitimate. Nor has there ever been a time when there have not been others who have been outraged by the way people have been manipulated into a blinkered acceptance of hypocrisy and carnage.
It’s this timeless quality of outrage that bubbles through the poem that has made To Whom It May Concern Mitchell’s most famous and probably his best loved poem. Mitchell also understood its universality and so he could never leave it alone, adapting the final verse to suit the latest bit of warmongering. This, for example, is the poems final verse for the 2008 remix:
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
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 –
Iraq
Burma
Afghanistan
BAE Systems
Israel
Iran
Tell me lies Mr Bush
Tell me lies Mr Blairbrowncameron
Tell me lies about Vietnam
Mitchell died in 2008 after a lifetime dedicated to Left politics, pacifism, poetry, drama and novel writing. His writing captured my imagination over 40 years ago and I saw him reading live twice - he was still inspirational even though we were both much older men by the time I saw him. I was delighted to see that there is a Youtube film of him reading To Whom It May Concern in the late 1960s and it’s great to see just how effective poetry can be as a weapon of peace.
In these times of Trump, Brexit and ‘alternative truths’ we need a new generation of Adrian Mitchells – an army of poets and artists - to emerge and to speak up for the values of humanity and decency. What history tells us is that it is ultimately our creative artists who are most effective at exposing the lies and obfuscations that politicians use to promote injustice, intolerance and war.
Terry Potter
July 2018