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Adrian Mitchell Quotes

Adrian Mitchell FRSL 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." Wikipedia  

✵ 24. October 1932 – 20. December 2008
Adrian Mitchell: 9   quotes 1   like

Famous Adrian Mitchell Quotes

“Most people ignore most poetry because most poetry ignores most people.”

Adrian Mitchell

Poems (1964), Preface.

“I know a lie when I hear one.”

Adrian Mitchell

“You put your bombers in, you put your conscience out,
You take the human being and you twist it all about
So scrub my skin with women
Chain my tongue with whisky
Stuff my nose with garlic
Coat my eyes with butter
Fill my ears with silver
Stick my legs in plaster
Tell me lies about Vietnam.”

Adrian Mitchell

"To Whom It May Concern", from Adrian Mitchell's Greatest Hits (1991).

“May I borrow your wheelbarrow?
— I didn't lay down my life in World War II
so that you could borrow my wheelbarrow”

Adrian Mitchell

"Ten Ways to Avoid Lending Your Wheelbarrow to Anybody", from Adrian Mitchell's Greatest Hits (1991).

“Lovers lie around in it
Broken glass is found in it
Grass
I like that stuff”

Adrian Mitchell

"Stufferation", from Adrian Mitchell's Greatest Hits (1991).
Other stanzas follow this pattern. Roger McGough wrote a version with the refrain "I like that stuff".

“I would have walked on the water
But I wasn't fully insured.
And the BMA sent a writ my way
With the very first leper I cured.”

Adrian Mitchell

"The Liberal Christ Gives a Press Conference", from Adrian Mitchell's Greatest Hits (1991).

“When I am sad and weary
When I think all hope has gone
When I walk along High Holborn
I think of you with nothing on”

Adrian Mitchell

"Celia Celia", from Adrian Mitchell's Greatest Hits (1991).

“Here are some happy English soldiers.
They are going to make the Irish happy.”

Adrian Mitchell

"A Tourist Guide to England", from Adrian Mitchell's Greatest Hits (1991).

“I was run over by the truth one day.
Ever since the accident I've walked this way”

Adrian Mitchell

"To Whom It May Concern", from Adrian Mitchell's Greatest Hits (1991)
Written in 1965, after hearing British troops might be sent to the Vietnam War.

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