Why We Need Protest Poetry

An exploration of political poetry and the place it has in wider protest

We rarely speak about protest poetry. It is always protest songs. Music, after all, is poetry that gets stuck in one’s head. Before we can speak, we sing, and rightly so. Music is beautiful. Moving. Like happiness, it is catching. And it does make us happy, some strange alchemy transforming musical notes plucked or thumped or strummed or scraped from instruments into a feeling. Happy, sad. Soft emotions, for instruments to assist. But sadness never fuelled a battalion. Happiness never brought a fascist regime to its knees.

With music, it is easy to get swept away. Words set to music are in danger of disappearing into the melody. Music is a beautiful river. But you can ride the current without paying the light any mind. What grace of motion they have in flight is not enough to soften the blow when it lands. Poetry is raw. It is humanity laid bare, words with jagged edges. It is thrown bricks, pounding at you, emotion in place of bass.

The emotions of political poetry are rage, frustration and devastation. It sounds an ugly thing, when put like that. But strangely, it is this harshness that is the fuel for that warm, budding thing called hope.

Political poetry is what happens when someone has had enough.

But, more than that, poetry is a way for those overlooked by a society that would rather see them dead than have them raise their voices with any kind of permanence. A common thing to hear at protests is “Existence is Resistance”. Existing loudly, therefore, existing in a way that no one can easily ignore, is an even bigger act of resistance still. But what happens when you cease to exist? Protest poets are minorities are oppressed people who care; they are activists. And activists die. All the time.

Marsha Pay It No Mind Johnson, Saint Marsha, flower-framed face of the Stonewall uprising, credited with throwing the “shot glass that was heard around the world” and beginning the rebellion. She died, but she did not cease to exist. Such a pillar of the community was she, such a force of kindness and rebellion that Marsha lives on in the minds of so many, remembered not just for her poetry but for who she was and what she did.

Most of us, though, simply do not have her presence. Her patience. Her seemingly unshakable faith. Most of us are not the face of a rebellion. We are faceless, masked by keffiyeh scarves, soldiers in an army aiming to avoid their body cams. For most of us, if you cease to exist, you cannot resist. If you cannot speak, you cannot scream. Unless, of course, you write your screaming down.

More than an act of resistance in the moment, poetry is a way for those protesting to say, I am here, I exist or I existed once, this is my voice and if it is all I have then I'll be damned if I won’t use it and to have it written down. Have it go down in history, even, have it recorded and repeated and read out by people just like them looking for a slice of hope.

Top Five Political Poems

1. Democracy Poem #1 by June Jordan

June Jordan, “the Poet of the People”, was an American poet, essayist, teacher, and activist who felt passionately about issues of gender, race, immigration, and representation. She strove to explore these issues in her writing, and earned the moniker “Poet of the People” for the awareness she brought them as well as the work she did to inspire and empower young people to use poetry as a means of artistic expression.

“Poetry is a political act”, said June Jordan, “because it involves telling the truth.” Which is exactly what this poem does. A short, simple recounting of her failed attempt to vote in an election, “Democracy Poem”, written in 1969, was intended to address issues of racial and social justice. It speaks of patience and compliance in the name of democracy, followed by frustration when that comes to naught, and ends with the line “just in case” – a declaration of stubborn hope. 

2. BBC - Robert Burns - Lines written on windows of the Globe Tavern, Dumfries

Robert Burns was a Scottish poet and lyricist who lived between the years of 1759 and 1796. Like June Jordan, Robert Burns made an effort to reject “standard English” and write in his own dialect. He is celebrated as a pioneer of the Romantic movement and a Scottish cultural icon, and the themes of his writing include republicanism, Radicalism, Scottish patriotism, anticlericalism, class inequalities, gender roles, commentary on the Church, Scottish cultural identity, poverty, sexuality, and the beneficial aspects of popular socialising.

His Radical folk song, “Scots Wha Hae”, served for a long while as Scotland’s unofficial national anthem. This poem, “Lines written on windows of the Globe Tavern, Dumfries”, which Burns literally etched onto the windows of the tavern, is startlingly anti-religious for its time. Described as a “protest poem”, it is blatantly anti-war and pro-sexuality. 

3. Soul Poem Written and Performed By Marsha P. Johnson, introduced by Jimmy Camicia

Marsha P. Johnson was an American queer rights activist, performer and sex worker. Described by her friends as “the most generous person [they] ever knew”, she was known as “Saint Marsha” or “the Saint of Christopher Street” for her endlessly warm and giving nature. Largely considered one of the most important and iconic figures of the American queer rights movement, speculation that it was she who started the Stonewall Uprising has never been confirmed, but she is often praised for her involvement in the Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries (STAR), and her advocacy for people with AIDS.

She performed this poem, "Soul", at the gay political theater Hot Peaches in 1972. The poem is short and sweet, prompting much laughter and cheering from the audience, but its message is clear: It is not what a person is that matters, but who. The very essence, the very soul of an individual is what will carry them through life. Without it, one has nothing. Especially with a life as uncertain and dangerous as a “Street Queen” like Marsha or the other queer people in the audience. 

4. We Don’t Call It a Riot by Chad Frame - Rattle: Poetry

Chad Frame is an American poet who grew up in a small town in suburban Pennsylvania. He wrote this poem for the Stonewall Inn, in response to being asked to do a reading at his county’s pride flag raising ceremony. Nettled by the prepared remarks of the Commissioners he was sent beforehand in which there were repeated references to the ‘Stonewall Riots,’ Frame wrote this poem to draw attention to the inappropriateness of the term “riot” to describe what happened in New York in 1969.

The poem captures something of the feeling of the time; the fear, the anger, the stubbornness, the love. The exhaustion of patience when it came to the persistent efforts of police and others to make queer people disappear. All that which bubbled over into action, and sparked the beginning of the ongoing battle for queer rights. 

5. WE THE HOMOSEXUALS - Poets Reading The News

Robin Gow is a Lambda Literary award-winning poet, educator, and organiser. This poem was written in response to a sign graffitied on the window of the Stonewall Inn by the Mattachine Society, a secret organisation famously dedicated to protesting for the rights of homosexuals through legal channels. The Mattachine Society disapproved of the Stonewall Uprising because they saw it as unnecessarily disruptive, and somehow detracting from the progress they had made for the movement.

“WE THE HOMOSEXUALS”, written exactly fifty years later, cannot reach the ones who wrote the sign, nor those protesters who so badly needed hope in 1969, but it can reach more people like Robin Gow – a queer person passionate about justice – who need the same message today that was needed in the 60s. And we do need it.

Protest poetry is important for its clarity, its rawness, its anger, and for the way in which all of these things can be made permanent. Poetry is a protest on a page. Sometimes it is all anyone can do.

[“For a book of poetry filled by activists seeking to raise their voices in the pursuit of justice, see our release Hope is a Word about activist poets in Nigeria sharing their struggle.]