PUBLICITY BLITZ:
The Cockney Bard
Introduction:
When I was asked to put this compilation together, I hesitated. Some of the poems/lyrics are from decades ago and obviously the work of an angry young man obsessed with injustice.
But poetic anthems like `National Service` and `Young Conservatives` have not dated.
The new poems include subjects ranging from `Working Class Pride` to love, romance and pop culture.
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An audio track by Garry Johnson, the heavily Cockneyed `Young Conservatives` which opened the night, could easily have been written the day after the General Election,
June 2015. The Morning Star Poetry Festival at The British Library.
Roxanne Escoboles
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FOREWORD
Garry Johnson and the Beat Of The Street
Britain is burning. The summer has seen riots break out across the country`s inner-cities.
There were many cultural voices that chartered the of this time. Punk, Reggae and Two-tone each, in there different but overlapping ways, provided means of social commentary.
The Specials, The Jam and Killing Joke captured the moods and the anxieties that simmered in the concrete jungle.
Among the most astute was Garry Johnson, whose poems provided first-hand accounts from London`s dead-end streets.
He told the truth about power. The false patriotism of self-serving elites was exposed in a Tory Party that stood "for mass unemployment and poverty, a them and us society".
Garry Johnson embodied the Punk spirit. Instinctively suspicious of authority in any form.
He always presented urban protest by saying "The white working class has got more in common with the black working class than they have with the rich white middle class"
Garry was all about working class kids having a laugh and having a say.
As it was, Garry - more even than many of the bands he supported or wrote about - personified one of Joe Strummer`s better insights: "The truth is only known by guttersnipes".
Garry Johnson`s poems were truly the beat of the street. At a time when words mattered, Garry`s snapshots of inner-city Britain now stand with the lyrics of Paul Weller as an essential record of the 1980s.
Professor Matthew Worley
Reading University
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"I first clocked Garry Johnson`s poems on Punk albums. He`s as direct and truculent as the music on them.
Upbeat, confrontational and jab, jab, jab.
As Joe Hill said: `There`s power in a union, and there`s power in Garry`s poetry, better yet he knows where to plant the punches".
Tim Wells - Founding/Editor Rising Poetry Magazine.
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John Lennon: "A Working Class hero is something to be".
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