If You See Me Comin'

I had a bit of a frustrating morning, but it all ended ok in the end. I had sold a couple of books over the weekend, but I had no jiffy bags to post them off in. I went uptown and no shop had any jiffy bags. I like to send off my books as quickly as possible so in the end I caught the bus over to Trowbridge. I managed to find what I needed in Poundland. I had a look around the charity shops while I was there. I found a nice book about Jimi Hendrix, but even better than that, I found a book by Adrian Mitchell.

It is a hardback first edition of the first book he ever published called If You See Me Comin’ from 1962. I was pleased to find this book because I like that era of the late 50’s & pre Beatles 60’s. It was the era of the Beatniks and protest and the beginnings of Pop Art and all that sort of thing. One thing I like about Adrian Mitchell is his poem To Whom It May Concern with the famous line Tell Me Lies About Vietnam which he performed live at the Royal Albert Hall in 1965 which you can see below if you want. Allen Ginsberg was also there on that memorable evening. Later in his career he wrote a poem about Victor Jara who was murdered by the Pinochet regime in Chile. It was set to music by Arlo Guthrie and has become a favourite song of mine, especially the version by Christy Moore.

Adrian died in 2008 aged 76. I looked him up on Wikipedia and found this tribute, "Adrian, said fellow poet Michael Rosen, "was a socialist and a pacifist who believed, like William Blake, that everything human was holy. That's to say he celebrated a love of life with the same fervour that he attacked those who crushed life. He did this through his poetry, his plays, his song lyrics and his own performances. Through this huge body of work, he was able to raise the spirits of his audiences, in turn exciting, inspiring, saddening and enthusing them.... He has sung, chanted, whispered and shouted his poems in every kind of place imaginable, urging us to love our lives, love our minds and bodies and to fight against tyranny, oppression and exploitation”.

I think in these days of Brexit & Trump, with the rain forests burning and shifts to the right all over the world and people forgetting the lessons of history and the dangers of fascism we need more people like Adrian Mitchell who weren’t afraid to stand up and be counted.