This Is a Message to Persons Unknown: The Story of Poison Girls by Rich Cross

PM PRESS | NOVEMBER 2025

PAPERBACK | 320 PAGES | 8" x 1" x 10"

Edited by Erin Yanke | Designed by Alec Dunn

Flesh and blood are what we are, flesh and blood are who we are, our cover is blown…
This Is a Message to Persons Unknown is the first full history of the legendary band Poison Girls. From their first gigs in Brighton in 1977 to years of DIY tours across Britain and Europe, the band forged a radical path through music, politics, and art.
Fronted by the uncompromising Vi Subversa—a singular lyricist, songwriter, and voice—Poison Girls challenged punk’s Year Zero myth, weaving ferocity with wit, emotional depth, and inventive sound. Just as formative to anarcho-punk as Crass, yet defiantly their own, Poison Girls confronted misogyny, ageism, and authoritarianism with a passion and clarity that still resonates today.

Drawing on exclusive interviews, zines, contemporary accounts, and the personal archives of band members, this richly illustrated history documents Poison Girls’ unforgettable songs, striking graphics, and fierce campaigns of resistance. More than just a band biography, This Is a Message to Persons Unknown tells the story of a group of dissident artists who turned punk into both a protest and a possibility—an experiment in living, creating, and fighting for something new.

Author Rich Cross first interviewed Poison Girls backstage at a gig in Exeter in 1981. It was a memorable, eye-opening encounter that confirmed how significant and unusual a band Poison Girls were, even among the firmament of political punk bands. From that point onwards, Cross meticulously collected and endlessly played all of the band’s vinyl releases, and traveled to see them play live in Birmingham, Bradford, Carlisle, London, Nottingham, and elsewhere. He corresponded with the band, shared his fanzine work with them, stayed at their Leytonstone home and once fled a fascist mob in the back of their van. Years later, Cross began to document different aspects of the history of British anarchism and the political punk movement. In 2014, Cross published one of the first detailed histories of the life and work of Poison Girls in Punk and Post-Punk Journal, an account which attracted praise and encouragement from Lance d’Boyle, Richard Famous, and Vi Subversa. “I must tell you that this is the nearest I have seen to an intelligent, truthful, and sensitive account of our history”, Subversa wrote in an email to Cross in September 2014. “I congratulate you on the work you have done in researching the material. I feel grateful that we may come out of obscurity into a clearer and more just focus. Thanks and all power to you.”

A comprehensive book-length history of Poison Girls is long overdue and, with the support of all surviving members of the band, Cross has been thrilled to have the opportunity to research and write a fuller treatment of the band’s life and work that seeks to highlight their singular contribution to the political punk counterculture of 1980s Britain.

"Why the fuck did I have a Crass shirt in high school but didn't hear about their peers, Poison Girls, until recently? When we do the meaningful work of digging back through the past and shining a light on women artists, we are making right past wrongs. Legendary all-male bands are only legendary because we gave them proper attention (sometimes exaggerated and undeserved) at the time, allowing their status to grow and their contributions to be oversold. But when women-centric bands are ignored or dismissed while active, their contributions not valued, it says less about their abilities in comparison to their peers and more about the insidiousness of sexism. Who else is missing from the history books? This Is a Message to Persons Unknown ensures Poison Girls will not be forgotten."
—Shawna Potter, front-person for War On Women and author of Making Spaces Safer: A Guide to Giving Harassment the Boot Wherever You Work, Play, and Gather

RICH CROSS is a researcher and writer on British and European protest movements and counter cultural resistance, particularly from the anarchist and libertarian traditions, Cross has published and presented extensively about the UK’s original anarcho-punk scene. He has edited the The Hippies Now Wear Black website for well over a decade, documenting both the history and the continuing creative dissidence of that scene's most resilient troublemakers.

ERIN YANKE is a self-taught documentarian with thirty-five years of projects. She regularly publishes zines and occasionally produces podcasts and films. She was a coauthor of It Did Happen Here: An Antifascist People’s History.

ALEC DUNN is a designer, printer, and nurse. He coedits Signal: A Journal of International Political Graphics & Culture and coauthored It Did Happen Here: An Antifascist People’s History. He is a member of the Justseeds Artists’ Cooperative.