i will recommend you

p.s.:
the 10% offer still stands
bye
the nameless nobody and many others from the B.I.W.U

I appreciate your viewpoint but I still think there’s confusion between form & content.

“when the only purpose of a poem is to get across a political message, and that the political message is more important than the poem then perhaps it is not a poem you should be creating.”

If you lose the word “political” out of the above then you’ll see my view point. The whole purpose of a poem is to communicate a message and the message is invariably more important than the form - whats the most important - the message or the bottle?

- now of course - there are going to be some wanky political poems, but, let me assure you, they are amply compensated by the multitude of wanky love poems out there (I know - i wrote a boatload). And - there are amazing love poems, and amazing political poems. The form poem is open to all - as are films. The legendary rom-com puts the fear of god into most men - but there are good ones.
good horrors, good documentaries, and lousy ones of each too.

I think what annoyed me most about the newsnight programme was that poetry is without doubt gaining in popularity, after a serious ammount of time neglected, and the programmme came across as someone that wanted to put it in it’s place before it got to big for its boots. Is there any other medium out there that you would try and stifle its subject matter - I hope not.

And I don’t think that was your, or anyone else’s intention, it was just the way it came across.

The war poets, whilst fantastic, by virtue of direct experience, and Wifred Owen - poor sod - dying a week before the first world war ended, gave a heartfelt account of the war, of course they did - but no more heartfelt than the folk singer Eric Bogle (green fields of france & waltzing matilda) whom wasn’t. Imagination is good!

Politics re-affirming what the faithful believe - or “playing to the crowd” in modern parlance has gone on for years, and will go on. Is there anyone who saw Schindlers list and thought “that changed my mind about the deathcamps!” and if there is, would we want to associate with them!
But that playing to the crowd didnt strike me as the target of the programme. Associating politics with poetry seemed to be the issue.

I mean as political poems go no-one mentioned Twat by JCC either, but let’s face it - as rants go - it’s a belter!

On a final note -
As for people knowing who the chartists were and what they did - most don’t, like the assasination of Spencer Percival the Prime Minister in the House of Commons, we don’t get taught it at school. How many chartist collections are there compared to say, the romantics?

I agree Poetry should be entertaining - as should all diversions - as Dario Fo’s culinary theatre for example, enjoy the meal, s*** it out afterwards. That doesnt mean that whilst you eat it can’t be meaty beaty big and bouncy (to quote the who) - and lets face it - the taste of a really good meal lingers long after the toilets been flushed.

As I said on my blog, poetry can be emotive in ways that political essays and speeches can’t be, and it’s then it had its place. However, I do feel like most of the “political” poetry I hear ranted out today is just preaching a wafer-thin message to the converted. Tory bashing at alternative arts festivals will not change anything and I think it was that that Simon and I were reacting to.

The Newsnight story was taken from the position that yes, poetry has been political, it has been read at marches, it has been written by those directly involved in conflict, but what about now, what about today? No one: “Said remember the Chartists / whose words were as powerful as fists /
A hundred and fifty years ago / they were known as Anarchists, / Poets arrested, locked up for years, / for saying it’s wrong to be racist…”

..because the story was taken from the point of view that we knew this had gone on and we were assessing where it is today. The point I was trying to make when I was cut of by Simon A was that the poetry of the First World War was so powerful because the people writing it were there living it. These days poets writing about war do so from an detached viewpoint. A lot of anti-Iraq War slam poetry I heard told me nothing new that I hadn’t read in a newspaper or heard on TV. What I meant about poetry needing to be emotive in these instances is that emotion is its primary asset. If it’s just slogan shouting and polemic then I think a speech or an essay might be a better medium. I didn’t mean that because we have papers and blogs poems are redundant, it’s just that when the only purpose of a poem is to get across a political message, and that the political message is more important than the poem then perhaps it is not a poem you should be creating.

I agree that repeating defeatist phrases like the one we heard about Austwitz our of context is not helpful, it only makes the repeater look clever. Of course writing can change the world. Of course words are powerful and they need to be believed in, I just don’ think a lot of modern, ranty political poetry is very good and I don’t think it changes things, simply confirms to people what they already know and makes them feel good for thinking it in the first place. There’s nothing wrong with that, I’ve always maintained that entertainment is a fine purpose for poetry, but sometimes we should be aware that this is all it is.