THE Morning Star poetry anthology, Who We Are, containing 61 poems from the Thursday Poem series 2023-24, launched in Glasgow on January 21. The rigours of a dark, wet evening were forgotten by a crowd ranging from young music fans to elderly campaigners, who were treated to some remarkable performances.

The launch was incorporated into the January run of Inside Voices, a monthly night of ambient music and poetry hosted by Anoraq, a Glasgow-based groove/spoken-word outfit of impressively good instrumentalists. Anoraq’s sound opens up conversation about boundaries; moving between genres, rhythms and languages, and as an ambient accompaniment to the anthology poems, made for a memorable experience.

Morning Star arts editor Angus Reid gave a gripping first performance with a completely different Who We Are, a poem contributed by Paul Laughlin, currently a director of the Derry Bloody Sunday Trust, and beginning: “Let us again assure you/ The murder of your families/ Is not who we are.”

He was followed by Lesley Benzie, David McKinstry, Julie McNeill, Ross Wilson and Finola Scott, each of whom read their own contribution plus an extra piece from the anthology. Their own pieces ranged from On the Day the World is Ending, Aftertaste, about the pandemic, to War – distant for us but all too real for Gazans – and the ghost of Cardownan Colliery beneath a new housing estate.

Many of the pieces they added covered contributions from Palestinian poets. Two were from Mohammed Moussa from his collection Salted Wounds, and another What is Home? from Mosab Abu Toha. Both poets are in exile from Gaza. Then there was A Quiet Scream, from West Bank poet Dareen Tatour, famously imprisoned by the Israelis for an earlier poem Resist My People, Resist. There were also pieces by Hugh McMillan and Doug Nicholls.

Alistair Finlay, the editor of the anthology, gave us a humorous Angus Calder piece Yet Another Poem About John Maclean and then the very serious A Game in Palestine by Jeff Mohamed: “A game they have in Palestine/ the one the children play/ a game they call Resistance/ and they play it every day.” 

Finally Angus Reid gave us The Planet is Dying by Jemima Foxtrot: “The planet is dying and it’s taking nightclubs with it/ and bananas and folk music./ The planet is dying and it’s too much to think about, I know./ Because washing out jars, getting rid of your car won’t fix it./ Not if it’s just you alone.”

But what the anthology shows is that it need not be “just you alone” – Who We Are really is The Many.

To hold your own event celebrating the anthology please contact campaigns@peoples-press.com.