Adrian Mitchell Biography
Adrian Mitchell (24 October 1932 – 20 December 2008) 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.
Mitchell sought in his work to counteract the implications of his own assertion that, "Most people ignore most poetry because most poetry ignores most people."
In a National Poetry Day poll in 2005 his poem "Human Beings" was voted the one most people would like to see launched into space. In 2002 he was nominated, semi-seriously, Britain's Shadow Poet Laureate. Mitchell was for some years poetry editor of the New Statesman, and was the first to publish an interview with The Beatles. His work for the Royal Shakespeare Company included Peter Brook's US and the English version of Peter Weiss's Marat/Sade.
Ever inspired by the example of his own favourite poet and precursor William Blake, about whom he wrote the acclaimed Tyger for the National Theatre, his often angry output swirled from anarchistic anti-war satire, through love poetry to, increasingly, stories and poems for children. He also wrote librettos. The Poetry Archive identified his creative yield as hugely prolific.
The Times said that Mitchell's had been a "forthright voice often laced with tenderness." His poems on such topics as nuclear war, Vietnam, prisons and racism had become "part of the folklore of the Left. His work was often read and sung at demonstrations and rallies."
Arms trade workers, here's an early warning
You might wake up tomorrow morning
And find that this is the glorious day
...
look at your hands
your beautiful useful hands
you're not an ape
you're not a parrot
...
I dreamed I was back in the playground, I was about four feet high
Yes I dreamed I was back in the playground, standing about four feet high
Well the playground was three miles long and the playground was five miles wide
It was broken black tarmac with a high wire fence all around
Broken black dusty tarmac with a high fence running all around
And it had a special name to it, they called it The Killing Ground
Got a mother and a father they're one thousand years away
The rulers of the Killing Ground are coming out to play
Everybody thinking: ‘Who they going to play with today?'
Well you get it for being Jewish
And you get it for being black
You get it for being chicken
And you get it for fighting back
You get it for being big and fat
Get it for being small
Oh those who get it get it and get it
For any damn thing at all
Sometimes they take a beetle, tear off its six legs one by one
Beetle on its black back, rocking in the lunchtime sun
But a beetle can't beg for mercy, a beetle's not half the fun
I heard a deep voice talking, it had that iceberg sound
‘It prepares them for Life' - but I have never found
Any place in my life worse than The Killing Ground.
...
At the top of the stairs
I ask for her hand. O.K.
She gives it to me.
How her fist fits my palm,
A bunch of consolation.
We take our time
Down the steep carpetway
As I wish silently
That the stairs were endless.
...
Lovers lie around in it
Broken glass is found in it
Grass
I like that stuff
Tuna fish get trapped in it
Legs come wrapped in it
Nylon
I like that stuff
Eskimos and tramps chew it
Madame Tussaud gave status to it
Wax
I like that stuff
Elephants get sprayed with it
Scotch is made with it
Water
I like that stuff
Clergy are dumbfounded by it
Bones are surrounded by it
Flesh
I like that stuff
Harps are strung with it
Mattresses are sprung with it
Wires
I like that stuff
Carpenters make cots of it
Undertakers use lots of it
Wood
I like that stuff
Cigarettes are lit by it
Pensioners are happy when they sit by it
Fire
I like that stuff
Dankworth's alto is made of it, most of it,
Scoobeedo is composed of it
Plastic
I like that stuff
Apemen take it to make them hairier
I ate a ton of it in Bulgaria
Yoghurt
I like that stuff
Man-made fibres and raw materials
Old rolled gold and breakfast cereals
Platinum linoleum
I like that stuff
Skin on my hands
Hair on my head
Toenails on my feet
And linen on my bed
Well I like that stuff
Yes I like that stuff
The earth
Is made of earth
And I like that stuff
...
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