Tom Leonard - Reports From The Present

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Reports from the Present is a book in two parts. The first part consists of the two poetry sequences situations theoretical and contemporary, and nora's place ; sandwiched between which are:- a series of essays about language, power and culture; a collage sequence called "The Present Tense"; an essay on the American Jewish poet Charles Reznikoff; and a reprint of the polemical pamphlet issued at the time of the Gulf War On the Mass Bombing of Iraq and Kuwait.

The second part of the book consists of a collection of mostly political satires on the nature of British internal politics and foreign policy in the eighties and early nineties, about half of which were first published as Satires and Profanities by the Scottish Trade Union Congress, in 1984, its small proceeds going to the striking British coalminers' fund at the time.

 

from Situations Theoretical and Contemporary:

The schooner The Mother of Parliaments has anchored in the bay.
The first British ship has reached your land.

See the row-boat, pulling to the shore.
See the ballot-boxes, glinting in the sun!

Run and tell your fellow-tribesmen.
We are going to have a referendum!
Shall we join the British Empire?

from On the Mass Bombing of Iraq and Kuwait

Many words were taboo, chief of which was the word "Iraq" itself. The possibility had to be avoided that people might actually imagine a real country with real people having an ancient culture. Instead there was the language-bombardment of demonology: "Saddam" this, "Saddam" that - as if it was a personal demon that was stretched like Guiliver from Turkey to Saudi Arabia. As for the catalogue of horrors that was being dropped on this demon's territory, there was a tension between the wish to brag about the efficacy of its mayhem and the need not to let people's mental pictures of this mayhem become graphic and actual. Thus what was bragged of as the biggest aerial bombardment in the history of warfare somehow became bound up with its also being one of the greatest acts of humanitarian charity the world has ever seen. As Mr Bush in one of his many incredible black=white statements put it, the whole operation was "a victory for the human race". it seemed at one point as if the designer of the Cruise Missile would be in line for this year's Nobel Prize for Peace. Here were thousand-pound bombs that seemingly paused at the kerb to let old ladies cross the road. And the gentlemen of the Press marvelled, wrote it down, and showed it on television.

OUT OF PRINT:

Reports From The Present

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