image: lukewright.co.uk
Every generation thinks ‘their’ decade is the one. Mine was the 1980s and funnily enough it was ‘the decade’. It was of course a ten-year span of Margaret, the Malvinas, Miners, Militant and Morrissey. While the 1960s threw off post war gloom and the 1970s merely acted as the start of the break down, the 1980s was the decade of polarization. It was raw. It was riots. It was Red Wedge. It was the start of now almost four decades of free market fundamentalism, of cash, capitalism and chaos.
Today in August 2017, Luke Wright, the Essex poet takes us back to that tumultuous decade in both content and style in the shape of his breathtaking, exhausting and uplifting play Frankie Vah. In particular Wright takes us back to Labour and polarization of the party as the left/right spilt, that had always been a feature, became a chasm and dramatically shapes Labour now. Wright has form when it comes to poems about Labour, his What I learned from Johnny Bevan won awards and is a searing insight in to the disappointment that was New Labour. In Frankie Vah he takes the political content up to 11 on the Spinal Tap amp.
