Explores the relationship between radical poetry and radical politics from the formation of the welfare state to the advent of Thatcherism Troubles the exclusionary category of 'British Poetry': includes work by Caribbean, African, Latin American, North American, and South Asian poets Challenges received ideas about the legacies of modernism, divisions between the avant-garde and mainstream, and the question of political commitment Brings together Kamau Brathwaite, Bill Griffiths, Lee Harwood, Claudia Jones, Mazisi Kunene, Hugh MacDiarmid, Anna Mendelssohn, Wendy Mulford, Denise Riley, Cecilia Vicuña, and many more Gives extended contextual background to cultural work by groups including The Race Today Collective, Preservation of the Rights of Prisoners, and the African National Congress Challenging received ideas about the British Poetry Revival, Luke Roberts presents a new account of experimental poetry and literary activism. Drawing on a wide range of contexts and traditions, Living in History begins by examining the legacies of Empire and exile in the work of Kamau Brathwaite, J. H. Prynne, and poets associated with the Communist Party and the African National Congress. It then focuses on the work of Linton Kwesi Johnson, Denise Riley, Anna Mendelssohn and others, in the development of liberation struggles around gender, race and sexuality across the 1970s. Tracking the ambivalence between poetic ambition and political commitment, and how one sometimes interferes with the other, Luke Roberts troubles the exclusions of 'British Poetry' as a category and tests the claims made on behalf avant-garde and experimental poetics against the historical record. Bringing together both major and neglected authorships and offering extended close readings, fresh archival research and new contextual evidence, Living in History is an ambitious and exciting intervention in the field.