The Selected Poems of Clive Branson

Clive Branson (1907–1944) was born in Ahmednagar, India, the son of a major in the Indian army.

He studied at the Slade School of Art and exhibited at the Royal Academy when he was just 23. Five of his paintings are today in the Tate. His daughter is the painter Rosa Branson.

In 1932 Branson joined the Communist Party. He taught for the National Council of Labour Colleges, spoke at weekly open-air meetings on Clapham Common and with his wife Noreen managed a Party bookshop. He took a leading role in driving Mosley’s British Union of Fascists out of Battersea, was responsible for the formation of a local Aid Spain Committee and fought with the International Brigades in Spain.

Taken prisoner at Calaceite, he spent eight months in Franco’s prison camps. After he was repatriated, Branson toured Britain raising money and support for the Spanish Republic. During the Blitz he painted Battersea street-scenes for the Artists International Association. Conscripted in 1941, he served as a tank commander in the Royal Armoured Corps. He was killed in action in Burma, aged just 36.

The Selected Poems of Clive Branson brings together, for the first time, the best of his surviving poetry. Passionate and committed, it’s a first-hand account of the most violent years of the twentieth-century – Britain in the Slump, Spain during the civil-war, Fascist prisons, the London Blitz, the cultural shock of India and its poverty, the war against Japan – recorded with a painterly eye and a communist faith in the power of the people.

Richard Knott (Editor) is a writer and poet. He has written extensively on aspects of modern history, including the experience of war artists (The Sketchbook War); war correspondents (The Trio); and most recently the surveillance of writers and artists by the Security Services over three decades: (The Secret War Against the Arts). He has also published two collections of poetry.

On Being Questioned After Capture: Alcaniz

I stood before my questioner who asked
‘Why leave home?
Why have you come?
Why?’ He must have guessed
‘Because he is a Communist.’

I thought of all the answers I could give
whether death is correct or whether to save
life for a rainy day
and told a lie to cheat his bullet with a word
to use a bullet afterward

On him the bigger lie – a conscript
‘volunteer’ to rape Spain where she slept
to save his own skin
he had come when he sought ‘The Leader’ on his hands and
knees
To crush a thousand years in half an hour
To make Guernica
a wilderness.

I could wait and so could lie
for adjournment to another court
meanwhile to live on my bended knee
to make occasion for another start.
I could imitate the victor, cringe
till I and the world beyond
take our revenge.

1939
Clive Branson
(1907–1944)

Selected Poems of Clive Branson
Edited by Richard Knott
Paperback
Release date: 01 May, 2023
Publisher: ‎Smokestack Books
Language: ‎English
122 pages
ISBN-10:1739173007
ISBN-13:978-1739173005
Price: £8.99

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