Joe Corrie
Joe Corrie Poems
'Eat more fruit!' the slogans say,
' More fish, more beef, more bread!'
But I'm on Unemployment pay
My third year now, and wed.
...
I am the Common Man.
I am the brute and the slave,
I am the fool, the despised
From the cradle to the grave.
...
How few there are with unsoiled hands,
And educated tongues,
Who'll stand by us, my working friends,
And help to right our wrongs.
...
We have borne good sons to broken men,
Nurtured them on our hungry breast,
And given them to our masters when
Their day of life was at its best.
...
God! how I've wearied for the Spring,
To hear the birds above me sing;
And see the blue within the sky,
For there were times I thought I'd die.
...
It's little I can tell o' classic things,
Homer an Dante strangers are to me,
That Troy an Tyre wis places ower the sea
Is a' I ken. Sae when my thochts tak wings
...
Standin' in Hunter's Bar ae nicht, gey fu',
A man crushed through the crood and searched my face,
'Guid Christ! '‘he stammered oot,' and is it you?'
I shook his hand, but him I couldna trace.
...
It's fine when ye stand in a queue
at the door o' the ‘Dole'
on a snawy day,
To ken that ye leive in the bonniest
...
Crawlin about like a snail in the mud,
Covered wi clammy blae,
ME, made after the image o' God -
Jings! but it's laughable, tae.
...
Joe Corrie Biography
Joe Corrie (1894–1968) was a Scottish miner, poet and playwright best known for his radical, working class plays. He was born in Slamannan, Stirlingshire in 1894. His family moved to Cardenden in the Fife coalfield when Corrie was still an infant and he started work at the pits in 1908. He died in Edinburgh in 1968. Shortly after the First World War, Corrie started writing. His articles, sketches, short stories and poems were published in prominent socialist newspapers and journals, including Forward and The Miner. Corrie's volumes of poetry include The Image O' God and Other Poems (1927), Rebel Poems (1932) and Scottish Pride and Other Poems (1955). T. S. Eliot described him as "the greatest Scots poet since Burns". He turned to writing plays during the General Strike in 1926. His one-act plays and sketches were performed by the Bowhill Players, an amateur company of miners who performed to raise money for local soup kitchens. The company operated professionally as the Fife Miner Players in 1928-31 under the management of comedian and theatrical agent, Hugh Ogilvie. Corrie's first play, Hogmanay was published by the Fife Miners' Reform Union. His full-length play, In Time O'Strife, depicting the General Strike's effect on the Fife mining community, toured Fife mining villages and musical halls all over Scotland. Corrie wrote a number of plays for groups who took part in the Scottish Community Drama Association's annual competitive festivals. Winning plays included Martha (1935), And So To War (1936) and Hewers of Coal (1937). Corrie's commitment to naturalism invited strong criticism from the Scottish theatrical establishment in his day and caused him to feel disconnected from other Scottish writers, his work was staged professionally by Scottish National Players and the Citizens' Theatre, Glasgow. Posthumously, agitprop theatre group, 7:84 republished In Time O' Strife alongside a collection of writing and poems after with their 1982 production. The Corrie Centre community provision in Cardenden was named after Corrie in 1985. Many of Corrie's poems, including I Am the Common Man, have been set to music. In 2013, The Joe Corrie Project: Cage Load of Men, a collection of poems set to contemporary and traditional music, was released.)
The Best Poem Of Joe Corrie
Eat More
'Eat more fruit!' the slogans say,
' More fish, more beef, more bread!'
But I'm on Unemployment pay
My third year now, and wed.
And so I wonder when I'll see
The slogan when I pass,
The only one that would suit me, -
' Eat More Bloody Grass!'
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