Drill, baby, drill
Drill, baby, drill
with greed-driven skill
Twisted and screwed
short-sighted and crude
Issues and campaigns: International
All around the world
Launch of What Rough Beast: poems on Trump and Trumpism
An online reading of poems from the anthology What Rough Beast: poems on Trump and Trumpism. This will include Janine reading Hallelujah President Trump, as well as other poets reading their contributions. Zoom link to follow. What Rough Beast: poems … Read More
What Rough Beast: poems on Trump and Trumpism
As citizens vote in the Presidential election in the USA, an anthology of poems opposing Donald Trump is published in the UK – and it includes Janine Booth’s poem, ‘Hallelujah President Trump’.
Pantoum: At Kindergarten in Lviv
Put on their coats and follow teacher
Away from danger from the skies
Air raids are a schoolday feature
War, Occupation and Mental Health
A personal view published in Asylum magazine, Summer 2024.
District 6
District 6 is an area of Cape Town, South Africa, that had a population that was racially mixed until the Apartheid government decreed in 1966 that District 6 become whites-only. Sixty thousand black and coloured residents of District 6 were evicted and their houses demolished.
Women’s Fightback #30 launch
Join us to celebrate the launch of the new issue of Women’s Fightback, a socialist feminist magazine by Workers’ Liberty.
Tourette’s, neurodiversity and class: the case of Madame Dampierre
In 1825, Paris physician Jean Marc Gaspard Itard assessed a French noblewoman in her twenties who, from the age of seven, had ‘ticked and blasphemed‘. She was one of ten people with similar symptoms described in an article by Itard. … Read More
Solidarity with Ukraine!
Artillery rounds and a barrage of shellfire It looks and it sounds like extending an empire Bombing and shooting civilians slain Expansionist Putin invading Ukraine Threatening nukes and rain hell from the skies Dismissing rebukes with chauvinist lies Conscripts uprooting … Read More
‘Unpublished Author’ Performed in Paris
Back in 2018, Janine performs ‘ Unpublished author’ in front of a shopload of books. Venue: Berkeley Books, Paris.
Run
Her cover drive and how she ran are now haram under the rule of the Taliban Can she stay in? For sure she can She can’t be out without a man in ancient, new Afghanistan She’d tackle assumptions and she’d … Read More
Women footballers escaping the Taliban
Published in Women’s Fightback 26, Autumn/Winter 2021 Kelly Lindsey, former head coach of the Afghanistan women’s football team – and before that, US international player – spoke to supporters before Lewes FC women’s home friendly against West Ham … Read More
Storming the Capitol
Trump set their touchpaper alight They marched there tooled up for a fight They’re so convinced that they are right And most still live – because they’re white
Free Zhang Zhan!
China jails citizen journalist for Wuhan reports Four years in jail for citizen reporter Who spread the news from virus-struck Wuhan Her mother cries in court to lose her daughter She showed the world the sickness, did Zhang Zhan So … Read More
Black culture and resistance: the Harlem Renaissance
Published in Solidarity 569: One hundred years ago, an arts movement was forming in a mainly-black district of New York City. Later known as the Harlem Renaissance, it was primarily cultural but also inescapably political. Literature, poetry, jazz, … Read More
Clerihew: Langston Hughes
Langston Hughes Wrote poems in the rhythm of the blues He gave folk the shivers With ‘The Negro Speaks of Rivers’
Clerihew: Tony Abbott
Tony Abbott jumps like a rabbit from homophobic bile to climate change denial
Poems of the Harlem Renaissance
I have contributed this short article to Black History Month activities where I work. Poems of the Harlem Renaissance – recommended by Janine Booth Maya Angelou, Langston Hughes and Claude McKay were all black American poets who were part of … Read More
Breaking The Law
I’m doing a bit of cash-in-hand work in a specific and limited way I’m nicking some pens as a justified perk in a specific and limited way I’m short on cash so I won’t pay my bills in a specific … Read More
Uproot, Depart
“When the looting starts, the shooting starts.” But when did the executing start? When did the racist recruiting start? And when will the prosecuting start? That will be when the suits will start elocuting and refuting parts, disputing and diluting … Read More