"Steve Ely is a poet from the West Riding of Yorkshire. His book of poems, Oswald's Book of Hours, is published by Smokestack and was nominated for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection in 2013 and the Ted Hughes Award for New Work in Poetry in 2014. Englaland, his second book of poems, was published in April, 2015, also by Smokestack. His novel, Ratmen, is published by Blackheath Books. Ted Hughes's South Yorkshire: Made In Mexborough, a biographical work about Hughes's neglected Mexborough period, will be published by Palgrave MacMillan in July 2015."
Etcetera, by Steve Ely
Great Britain impoverished to post-war prosperity:
everyone working, but nobody earning and nothing
to buy. Capital needed Labour for its unsocial
dirty work, but the natives wouldn't shift or shovel shit.
Jamaica & subcontinent took up the White Man's Burdens.
Race-rioting Teds, half-devil and half-child; Mosley,
that infantile Satan, master of puppets. Elite psychology
of fascism: malleable masses dependably deployable in the service
of their masters, to know - and keep - their place. Send them back!
Roman foreboding largely unwarranted. It naturalised
to jargon - multi-cultural, multi-ethnic, multi-faith
- and reality on the ground, common humanity working
its warmcockle nostrums. People simply got used to it,
to each other, cordially embracing, ignoring or hating.
A provisional peace of geniality and ghettos,
subject to periodic eruption. I was born to this.
The young know nothing else. This is England.
(from Englaland, Smokestack Books)
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