Poetry Of The Deed

Album: Poetry Of The Deed (2009)
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Songfacts®:

  • This is the second single and title track of London-based singer-songwriter Frank Turner's third studio album.
  • Turner told The Express Night Out the message behind this song: "[Anarchist philosopher Mikhail] Bakunin had this idea about 'propaganda of the deed,' and not writing pamphlets and actually doing things with your life, and I wanted to say something similar about poetry and reading Kerouac books and going out and being the sequel. It's about the fact that I'm a firm believer that life is what you make of it, and that you can seize life by the horns. There was an amazing thing in the London Underground where they occasionally have some advertiser's space where public art goes up sometimes, and they had this really trippy piece of multi-colored backing that had in the middle, 'If you don't like your life, you can change it.'
    I always thought that was excellent, and I really enjoyed being part of the commuters bow and traveling around London seeing this excellent statement on the walls, so that was part of the inspiration for it. There are limitations to that, who your parents might be, or whatever, but generally speaking what riles me is people complaining about facets of their life they could change if they were just prepared to put in the hard work and have the courage to do it."

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