Poet and photographer Paul Steffan Jones developed an abhorrence of social injustice not by taking to the roads of London or cleaning in the kitchens of Paris, but by working for the Department of Social Security in a Job Centre Plus, where, against the unwritten rules in operation there, he actually proactively assisted his clients to fill out the necessary forms to make successful claims. This wilful independence of spirit and a burning anger against establishment mores stokes his poetry and his photography.
My Fake News
Our questionable democracy
in its heartless heartland
its chasms of inequality
and spasms of broken promises
uneven justice that isn’t even justice
the cause of the proliferation of foodbanks
denied by millionaire cabinets
and their empty debate podia
the denial of climate disaster
and the Holocaust
policies based on alternative facts
wars waged on non-existing evidence
we allow our lives and those of our children
and the health of the earth and its creatures
to be skewed and prostituted by dark money
and unaccountable lobby groups
those so-called Islamic States
that so-called Tommy Robinson
you couldn’t make it up
but someone did
my fake news
Liars Incorporated
shamelessness is the new virtue to signal
and here comes my deepfake
wonder what I will end up looking like
