What convinces Jeremy Corbyn that ‘there is a poet in all of us’?

Much like its editors, I have no idea who Poetry for the Many is for. However, the choir it preaches to is quickly identified. It opens with a dedication to Julian Assange, the free speech martyr in no way a narcissist patsy for a hostile state. A member of UB40 summarises the book’s aim on the jacket: to ‘encourage the working classes to embrace and enjoy culture’. Elsewhere, in the course of four separate introductions, I divine some plan to make poetry both politically relevant and accessible to the lower orders.

This project apparently requires the literary advocacy of Len McCluskey and Jeremy Corbyn. They have written personal introductions to their favourite poems and invited ‘friends’ to do the same. These friends are mostly drawn from the celebrity class of comedians, auteurs and actors traditionally first to man the barricades (Russell Brand was dropped shortly before going to print). This notably pale group, Melissa Benn improbably claims, has often been ‘sidelined, mocked or castigated for their efforts’, and may therefore read this with a sense of déjà vu. Among the contributions are, at least, a couple of thoughtful commentaries: one from the estimable Gary Younge, and another from Ken Loach – unusual here in that his strenuously professed love of poetry seems to extend to actual acquaintance with the stuff, even if he plumps for leftie self-caricature in his choice of ‘Say not the struggle naught availeth’.

Len’s taste runs mostly to Victorian schoolbag classics – ‘Invictus’, ‘If’, and so on. He is a clever man but writes like a child. An Emily Dickinson poem is ‘so beautifully written and speaks to all of us about the greatest emotion, hope, and how fragile it can be’. Robert Frost’s nihilist masterpiece ‘The Road Not Taken’ makes him think ‘what my life would have been like had I chosen another direction’.