ABSTRACT
This chapter introduces to the work of the poet Andrew Jordan, who was, it became clear, the main voice of Proles 4 Modernism and the designer and writer of its leaflets, although not, apparently, its only member. It is also an introduction to the preoccupations that run through his small but violently powerful published corpus of poetry. To the north is a landscape of 19th century fortresses on Portsdown Hill, once nicknamed 'Palmerston's Follies' after their Prime Ministerial sponsor, who anachronistically feared a French invasion. Landscape here begins to come into focus when it becomes carnal. Jordan's poetry has a Wilhelm Reich-influenced, and now somewhat touching belief in the liberatory power of untrammelled sexuality, as an alternative to the 'cold prosthetic history' produced by the heritage industry. The prostitutes, displaced from the brothels of Derby Road by local authority action, provide a similar range of thrills to those found in the early 18th century English landscape garden.
