Adrian Mitchell's poetry’s simplicity, clarity, passion and humour show his allegiance to a vital, popular tradition embracing William Blake as well as the ballads and the blues. His most nakedly political poems – about war, Vietnam, prisons and racism – became part of the folklore of the Left, sung and recited at demonstrations and mass rallies. His childlike questioning was a constant reminder from the 60s onwards that poetry is first and foremost an assertion of the human spirit.
A pacifist prophet who remained true to his heartfelt beliefs, Mitchell reported back for over half a century from a world blighted by war, compromise, double-talk and pragmatism without losing his innocence, integrity and impish sense of humour. Angela Carter described him as a ‘joyous, acrid and demotic tumbling lyricist Pied Piper determinedly singing us away from catastrophe’.
Now out of print, all the poems in Heart on the Left are included in Mitchell's posthumous retrospective, Come On Everybody: Poems 1953-2008.
- ISBN13 9781852244255
- Publish Date 23 October 1997
- Publish Status Out of Print
- Out of Print 18 March 2010
- Publish Country GB
- Imprint Bloodaxe Books Ltd
- Format Paperback (UK Trade)
- Pages 352
- Language English