Adrian Mitchell
Adrian Mitchell
Adrian Mitchell FRSL was an English poet, novelist and playwright. A former journalist, he became a noted figure on the British Left. For almost half a century he was the foremost poet of the country's anti-Bomb movement. The critic Kenneth Tynan called him "the British Mayakovsky"...
NationalityBritish
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth24 October 1932
Adrian Mitchell quotes about
lying eye skins
You put your bombers in, you put your conscience out,You take the human being and you twist it all aboutSo scrub my skin with womenChain my tongue with whiskyStuff my nose with garlicCoat my eyes with butterFill my ears with silverStick my legs in plasterTell me lies about Vietnam.
lying glasses stuff
Lovers lie around in itBroken glass is found in itGrassI like that stuff
atrocities committed england faithfully miles sitting terrible thousands
It's about sitting faithfully in England while thousands of miles away terrible atrocities are being committed in our name.
believe use want
I use the language I use to my friends. They wouldn't believe me if I used some high-flown literary language. I want them to believe me.
rocks use rock-n-roll
I use rock and jazz and blues rhythms because I love that music. I hope my poetry has a relationship with good-time rock'n roll.
song party innocence-and-experience
There have always been poets who performed. Blake sang his Songs of Innocence and Experience to parties of friends.
firsts different provocative
Written poetry is different. Best thing is to see it in performance first, then read it. Performance is more provocative.
talking world want
I want to speak, to sing to total strangers. It's my way of talking to the world.
believe men giraffe
The man who believes in giraffes would swallow anything.
writing writing-essays theory
I don't like writing essays or theory.
firsts leper
I would have walked on the waterBut I wasn't fully insured.And the BMA sent a writ my wayWith the very first leper I cured.
running one-day way
I was run over by the truth one day.Ever since the accident I've walked this way
thinking think-of-you i-think-of-you
When I am sad and wearyWhen I think all hope has goneWhen I walk along High HolbornI think of you with nothing on
country war reading
The maiden Olympics had more to protest about than mere war, though. Central to its ethos was a rejection of two establishments the political one, certainly, but also that of the wider poetry world itself. It changed poetry for ever in the UK, ... It led to readings all over the country. You suddenly got more women reading and publishing poems, as well as gay guys and poets from all over the world. Until that time, published poetry had been very university-based white, male, middle-class. We were trying to break poetry out of its academic confines.