Whatever Happened to Poets?
Can you write a sonnet? Why is poetry no longer a cultural force? Should it become one again?
The inspiration for writing this came recently, when my wife and I visited Blanchland, a place which WH Auden visited and wrote about. trying to describe him, his work and his importance to other people made me wonder just what the place for poetry is in the current year reality.
I have memories of being taught short rhymes in history class, as little extracts to illustrate the effect poets could have upon people, their politics and positions. The one that sticks with me to this day is:
“Pitt is to Addington as London is to Paddington1”
If you read through many books, memoirs or novels about the inter war period you’ll quickly see how Houseman’s “A Shropshire Lad” was a de rigueur handbook for young men with both Auden and Orwell commenting on it, and Charles Rider taking “the Medici Press edition of A Shropshire Lad” with him to Oxford.
If I look through my collection of poetry though, there’s little that was published after the second world war. I have a few volumes of Seamus Heaney’s work, and his Beowulf is rightfully recognised as a masterpiece. I can also remember loving Roger McGough, especially his Imaginary Menagerie, as a child after seeing him on Saturday morning TV. Apart from those two though, there’s a blank space. Is there' nothing worth saying poetically now?
Perhaps, like vinyl records the medium is having a quiet comeback? I doubt it, but I can say that writing sites such as Substack are in many ways an ideal way to share poetry and the short, pithy, catchy nature of a well written work would seem well suited to 3 inch square of screen which holds our attention. Amanda Gorman’s recital of her writing at Biden’s inauguration briefly pushed poetry back to the front pages, but I’ve not seen many follow in her wake and certainly none who write poetry which speaks to the other side of aisle. Sadly the lines connecting “just is” and “justice” were by far the worst and the most quoted, but it’s a far better piece of poetry than almost everything else of its class.
I personally don’t agree with the idea I’ve occasionally seen that the excellent writers who can capture rhyme and meter are all involved in the music industry. Not only are most lyrics mindless and repetitive, but I expect they owe more to focus groups and tick lists than any creative muse. Pop music tropes offer a fairly narrow range of subjects too.
One modern poet who seems to fit my definitions of being a politically impactful man is Benjamin Zephaniah. A black poet from Birmingham, he has also worked in music and as an actor, appearing in many episodes of the Peaky Blinders. He also famously refused the honour of an OBE, in part because of his dislike of the blatant Imperial connotation. His actions as an anti-racist, vegan, left wing anarchist2 seem very authentic and his own influence and beliefs can’t really be judged as negative simply because they are shared by the bien-pensants. At the age of 65, he’s also out of the “new and exciting” bracket.
Personally, his work is not to my taste at all. I do understand it can speak for a sector of the population, and do that quite articulately. I just can’t imagine that same sector going out to find his works.
We’ve also had somewhat poor luck with those appointed Poet Laureate3; Andrew Motion was notably dismissive and negative about the post and Simon Armitage’s work about the death of the Queen has a distinctly “English homework” feel about it. Perhaps that’s the nature of the job, but then we have millennia of poetry designed to record events in a way which flatters patrons. It might simply be the phenomenon I think of as the “filter of time” where the bad and average are simply forgotten over the course of years, leaving only the great.
It’s much the same with recent poetry awards and new stars. some awards can be given for political reasons as much as the quality of the work. The Guardian does write about exciting new poetry, but I think every single work they posit has an ideological or identarian element. Posterity is unlikely to be kind to such things, as ideology is always shifting and swimming, and I doubt that anybody who doesn’t already agree with such beliefs would ever pick up a book of poetry extolling them.
Two recent award winning poems “Reading the Safeguarding and Child Protection Policy” and “The Fruit of the Spirit is Love (Galatians 5:22)” both contain elements which do resonate with me. I taught children for over 15 years, seeing how the safeguarding aspect of the role and awareness of it grew over that time. I’m also a child of the 90s, who can remember Jason Lee as a punchline of a footballer and certainly the “Lads’ Mag England” that Thompson mentions. In reality though, I don’t really like either poem. The unstructured, stream of consciousness of the first makes it hard to read and I find only works to illustrate another’s though process and not to effect my own. For the second, only the temporal aspects have any impact upon me - I’m neither Welsh nor mixed heritage nor can any writing really put me in the place of someone who is.
One of the most famous scenes in the Parade’s End saga is where Tietjens, repeatedly referred to as England’s last true Tory, rapidly writes a sonnet for another man to translate into Latin - all as a means of taking the latter’s mind away from the horrors of trench warfare. I can’t imagine many such people existing in our modern world, though I did have the fortune to teach a young man who enjoyed translating Italian and English poetry and speeches to Greek and Latin - he became a medical doctor, so humanity has not lost out completely. I’m sure some would suggest that an AI could do it, but what’s the point of that?
Heinlein also wrote that the ability to write a sonnet was an important part of being human. His screed against specialisation is still often seen online.
Should I write a sonnet? Why not. More poetry written means better poetry written - creative endeavours are a game of numbers and the grind through thousands of lines of dross is a real struggle. The challenge of writing poetry for those out of fashion in the current cultural zeitgeist, the dissidents against hypermodernity or followers of tradition, is especially important. Write poetry to be read and shared. Free yourself to write bad poems, so one day they’ll not be bad any longer.
When I write poetry I shall publish it here, and win no plaudits or awards.
Pitt and Addington were both British prime ministers, during the period Paddington was still a village outside London not the station (and bear) it’s famous for today.
I shall write more on this in future. Essentially, I don’t see how abolishing law and structure would bring equality - they’d rapidly result in a new aristocracy without a Leviathan.
Paid a literal butt-load. A butt of sack being their traditional payment, essentially a barrel of sherry (126 British gallons). Butts at the end of their lives where then repurposed as longbow targets, leading to the proliferation of Butts Grove, Butt Lands, Butt’s Road and similar locales.
Poetry, as with most other forms of high culture, traveled so far up its own arse that it has trouble seeing what people actually enjoy reading. Either that, or it can’t compete with the internet and TV. I’m open to both possibilities being real.
As with all high culture, poetry will continue to be important to the small cadre of people whose tastes and opinions actually matter and shape things.