'A devastatingly powerful collection...Brilliantly written, acerbic satire.'

Disability Arts Online

 

'The “Red Shelley” of Paul Foot’s radical analysis, the anger of a Tony Harrison, and the dexterity of rap are all discernible in Morrison’s lengthy campaigns...' Martyn Halsall, Church Times

 

'...His texts combine lyricism and an inventive artistry with serious commitment, something rare in contemporary poetry and much needed at the present time...' Steve Spence, Litter Magazine

 

'Imagery is Morrison’s strength. In the title sequence we have ‘That August, attitudes hardened like tarred arteries, and austerity/ Throttled the wilting trees’, to set the scene for the political demonisations and bureaucratic cruelties he enumerates. Images like this energise the poems, and give a context to the sometimes obsessive detail. …These are breathless poems… passionate, wide-ranging, unashamedly fighting for the disenfranchised, in a time when the fight could hardly be more urgent. Perhaps it doesn’t matter how you classify… the utterance of this extraordinary, intense, much-needed poet.’ 

Ruth Valentine, London Grip

 

'Alan Morrison is rare among his generation on the current British poetry scene; he’s a properly provocative poet whose commitment to the ideas of socialism is passionate, erudite and convincingly argued. As befits a poet of the left, he’s angered by injustice of all kinds and writes intelligent polemic. Yet Morrison is not simply a ‘political’ poet in the narrow sense, he can be lyrical, humorous and inventive too. I hope he will be as widely and appreciatively read as he deserves.'

Alexis Lykiard

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Alan Morrison’s eighth collection is a devastating and intense indictment of recent governments’ pursuit of benefit claimants. It demonstrates how the ‘tan’ envelopes dispatched by publicly appointed agencies embody that indiscriminate pursuit.

            This deconstruction of injustice weaves itself around an intricate historical tapestry of other struggles by the poor and disenfranchised. ‘The Moving Rainbow’ retells the story of the Bryant and May matchwomen’s 1888 strike, still ‘a light against intransigent grains/ Of industrial night’. Later, ‘Going Dutch’ is a sharp satirical riff on the dismantling of welfare state funding; ‘each pays according to their means (or mains), ... the less/ their means then the less they’ll eat – or heat’.

            Fifteen ‘Tan Raptures’ provide finely-wrought portraits of contemporary despair. For instance, ‘Shut Curtains during the Day’ exposes the government’s attempts to enlist people to spy upon supposed benefit scroungers. Like the theme of ‘The Bedroom Taxidermy’, the measure betrays no understanding of how people actually live. Finally, Morrison delivers a traumatic and moving roll call of many who have died, in the aftermath of receiving one of the dreaded ‘tan’ envelopes.

            This dense and detailed book contextualizes deprivation, presenting a studied gallery of how it looks, and why it persists. While the energy behind Morrison’s writing is unique and derived from his acute sense of injustice, it never loses its humour and linguistic vitality. It’s above all narrative verse, which, with compassion, colour and extraordinary knowledge shows us the trajectory of lives that are determined and suppressed by cant and denial. Will Daunt, Pulsar