In a very critical article in the Daily Mail on Thursday Christopher Hart said. (concerning the fact that there is no news about the poet Laureate writing a poem for the Queen`s 90th birthday)

`Now we are reduced to Carol Ann Duffy writing about small soon-to-be-obsolete domestic appliances. No wonder people have so little time for poetry any more`

Is he right?...(about people having so little time for poetry)

This was always going to be the problem with her Harry. I have no time for her or her work and always thought her appointment was a politically correct (first female and gay etc) gesture. There were better options.

To answer your question, telling someone you're a poet is akin to telling them you only have one testicle (males only obviously) they both feel sorry for you and smile at the same time.

It is one of the reasons that poetry has moved to performance where it has been consumed by rap and rant, to make it cool.

CAD was never going to write a patriotic piece. It's not in her DNA (another cliche).

Ah! That feels better.

Fellers,
what I`m after is the `why` of it.

Most of us know exactly how you feel...and yet?

On the great Bard`s birthday, the fact that stands out is the astounding `long lastingness` of poetic fame. (and remember. most of Wills output was `rhyme - free` as Hart so dismissively calls it.)

Is is it the comparative absence of the `entertainment` element of so much of today`s stuff. But definitely not
yours Jonathan.

At least the ranters have a bit of life in them, but the point that Hart makes about the `thumpingly obvious` is very
telling...are they choosing the wrong targets.?

Anyway, I`m out tonight (but I`m still trying to pen one)

(don`t let the bast..ds grind you down boys!)

Sorry!

I mean entertainment as an intellectual - or emotional - `holding` or engrossing thing.

There's a quote from Adrian Mitchell (which Attila the Stockbroker has on a t-shirt, and which I think hits at least one nail on the head): "Most people ignore most poetry because most poetry ignores most people".

I'm not sure the Mail is right (when is it ever?), but for a lot of people – and I know I'm generalising here, but bear with me – their involvement with poetry is limited to being forced to read 'great works' at school, in language they don't use, on subjects they don't relate to. Hardly a surprise they have a low opinion of poetry, but their definition of 'poetry' is often narrow and the reasoning circular "I don't like poetry because poetry is stuff I don't like."

I love poetry, but I'm the first to admit there's some of it I find dull as ditchwater. Or impenetrable. Why should it be any different for people who never really engaged with what they were told was 'poetry'? But then they probably don't consider their favourite song lyrics to be poetry, and they may well believe that 'poetry' is the preserve of old, dead white men. (In fairness, the Mail probably believes that too.)

There's plenty of writing and performance out there (and on this site, if I may say so) which *does* entertain, and engross, and engage with people's emotions. They're rarely presented with it, however, and I'd have more time for the Mail's point of view if they tried giving the best of modern poetry – page or performance – some column inches.

I could go on. But you get my gist. :-)

Agreed about the column inches!

Especially in the tabloids but even the heavyweights hardly ever carry much poetry.

The quintessential irony of this is the white van man who couldn't bear poetry at school but who sings all the words to popular music as he cuts others up at junctions and roundabouts etc. Priceless!

This isn't a very scientific analysis, and maybe not even unbiased, but the Guardian always publishes a poem in its Saturday Review section, and has a number of poetry features online http://www.theguardian.com/books/poetry. The Morning Star has a regular feature that is highly regarded and prized in the poetry world. I once had a poem published there on the day the Leveson inquiry report came out - a sonnet, no less! - and I know Steve has been featured there too http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/a-550c-Steve-Pottinger-this-will-be-a-re-run#.Vx6WFPkrKUk The big poetry prizes get a bit of news coverage in the heavyweights. As for Carol Ann Duffy, all I can say - and this is going off-topic - is that I was at a Shakespeare event on Saturday where two of her sonnets were quoted approvingly by her fellow poets http://www.writeoutloud.net/public/blogentry.php?blogentryid=56283. I always think you're a little hard on our laureate, Graham!

Gas meters Greg! Bloody gas meters! I rest my case.

Hillsborough verdict tomorrow, Graham. She wrote a poem on that, too http://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/news/liverpool-news/poet-laureate-carol-ann-duffy-3334921

Thanks for the timely reminder about the coverage poetry *does* get in papers, Greg.

There's much more to poetry than the Mail would have us believe (as those of us on this site are well aware!) I suspect the Mail's appreciation of poetry starts and finishes with anything of Kipling's they can get misty-eyed and patriotic over. Maybe this is an opportunity for Write Out Loud to contact them and offer to supply a weekly poem... ;-)

I'm no fan of CAD but what precisely is wrong with a poem about gas meters?

Poetry is a various art, and I don't think that's well-reflected in education. Some of it is going to be difficult or innovative and positively weird. Some of it is going to be relatively easy, some of it is going to be moving and emotive, some of it is going to be shaped like a banana.

Perhaps CAD as Laureate could have composed something about the gas meters in Buckingham Palace.

Consider the red gas meter etc etc.........

Quite a few laureates never wrote anything about those overpaid billionaires with their multiples homes bleeding the country dry with their fat arses farting out privilege and class discrimination. (Personally I've always favoured the French solution to the monarchy)

If she's gonna write bad occassional poetry, I'd rather it was at least about real life as lived by the working classes than about a bunch of useless twats who sit on thrones all day.

The Queen's gas meters can go fuck off.

Getting back to Harry's question and Steven's position.

Is that what poetry mean to the "working classes" then?

Listening to someone ranting (or perhaps just reading) about ordinary day to day things that they can relate to, see every day, experience, do or get done to, laugh about, cry over etc etc!

How does this sort of stuff transport the reader to a better place, to self improve, to travel, to think big, to want better.

Surely it's just providing beer to cry into.

Who "makes time" for that?

I'll say it again: poetry is a various art. Sometimes it transports you to extraordinary places sometimes it celebrates the ordinary.

Readers too have different needs at different times.

I don't see what the problem is with that. There's different kinds of poetry out there; all you have to do is look. Maybe you need to look in less obvious places.

But again: if someone wants to celebrate gas meters then I see nothing wrong with that. If it was all there was to poetry, it probably would be boring, but it isn't all there is.

The devil is in the detail, I think, Greg. What lifts one poem about love and loss above another? The way the words are put together, the rhythm and melody of them, the way in which the poet has chosen to approach the subject (preferably one which manages to cast some new light on the subject, if possible), and so on.

It's entirely possible to read a poem about everyday things which challenges, touches, moves, and inspires (and, equally, read an 'inspirational' poem which does none of the above).

Maybe we should have a Write Out Loud exercise whereby we all write a poem which takes gas meters as a starting point, and see what we end up with!

I think Steve Pottinger has stated the essence of the problem in a nutshell.

Steven Waling`s idea of it as a `various art`is a bit too unmeaningfully `all things to all men` to be of any use.

To those poets worried about their testicles: I think that often - if they hear you`re a poet - they are a bit in awe 0f you (particularly if you can show a photo of yourself reading).They don`t worry if they can`t understand your poems because `no one understands poetry do they`.

I think Graham is right about popular music usurping poetry in the recent past. It did so imo because it was melodic, relevant, and -even when it went mad - up to date with the passing trends.

Free form and any subject are already here to stay. All of which brings us back to what Steve is saying about rhythm, melody, approach, inspiration, and the way the words are put together.

About gas meter poems (with my tongue firmly in my cheek, and blaming Graham) how about:

So much hangs
upon

The red gas
meter

Hissing with royal
gas

hazarding the royal
corgis.

Harry - glad to see Metre at last being placed at the heart of poetry.

i wish i could like the above post

Poetry is a various art. That's a factual statement.

As is art, actually.

I mean, if a bunch of rocks piled up on a gallery floor can get called art, then a bunch of random letters on a page can get called poetry.

I wonder how many Anglo-Saxon alliterative poets in the 12th century fulminated into their beers about them new-fangled sonnets not bein' real poetry with proper kennings an' dragons an' 'ero's an' all?

As for them poncy la-di-da troubadour poets with their clever rhyme schemes and wotnot, what's the world comin' to eh? Bring back Beowulf and the Sagas I say!

Meanwhile, 'ere's one of the Ayku of Man-kyo, recently discovered down the back of a settee in Wy-zen-sho:

Meter's gone again
left uz i'dark wi'out coin
till pay day comz roun'

Steven, I'm not going to even try to answer that. Chapeau!

I do however think you have found a new niche!

Pago-Haiku Rules

This week,Ms Duffy was on the BBC Morning Show out of London, and said categorically that she does not like writing 'to purpose'. And that's that. She did read, not well, a little work about 'prayer' which I followed carefully in spite of her poor rendition, and I quite enjoyed the actual content.

How can she not know how badly she reads? A few lessons in simple elocution would work wonders. I just don't get it.

I don't think any writer likes writing to order. However, I suspect she gets commissioned. Which is probably where the gas meter poem comes from. Poets have to pay their gas bills too y'know...

Steven,
(A serious question)

If some avant-garde practitioner puts a bunch of random letters on a page and calls it poetry, how do we decide if it is or not?

Cynthia,
The u-tube of the deadpan Duffy reading her
secular half-nod to religious spirituality in the chopped-up surplice of a sonnet suits it perfectly.

The linking of a kind of prayer to a tree, a train, a set of piano scales, and a weather forecast, includes some very unusual couplings, proximities and sound suggestions which, although related to the theme, sound a bit suspicious.

For instance:... `stare` (not listen?) to the tree? `minim` (rather than say `hum`) to the sound?
The proximity of `faithless` to the line-ending `truth`?
The man hears himself in the `chanting`...(chunting?)
The use of the mundane `piano scales` (not music?) so soon after the `chanting`.
The final couplet confirming `darkness outside` yet inside a windswept wilderness of weather names.

The poem has the feel of Larkin`s `Churchgoing` mock sprituality.

Duffy`s deadpan delivery (on this occasion) helps to keep the `gullible spiritual`on board without offending what Hart called the `Liberal anxieties` of her secular support...
She couldn`t be caught reading it sincerely.

It is just another one of what Hart calls her `righteous issues`... grist for the mill?

Serious answer, Harry:

It's poetry if the writer says it is. You don't have to like it.

Just as art is art if the artist says it's art. The artist Richard Long once walked ten miles across Dartmoor in a dead straight line. Nobody but a few kestrels saw him do it. He called it art, and presented the record of it (which wasn't the art) in a gallery.

You don't have to like that either.

It doesn't have to be any good either. A bit of doggerel about a dead cat is still a poem if the writer says it's a poem. It's just a bad poem.

You don't have to like a few random letters across a page; but if its main focus is language rather than visual or musical, then I guess that's a reasonably good definition of poetry. 'Visual poetry' probably slides off at some point into 'text art' so the boundaries are porous; but I like to think that some of the more interesting work is being done at the edges of things.

The problem of 'quality' does rear its ugly head at times, and it isn't admitedly an easy one to answer. I wouldn't expect the visual poem to have a particularly large audience, and I'm not personally an expert on evaluating it (any more than I am with a lot of classical music) but I know I like some of it and don't like others, or they don't move me as much.

But as for whether it is or is not 'poetry' I leave that to the writer to decide.

I seem to recall an artwork very similar to that at the Tate once. I think one might have to call your work 'derivative'.

After this one can only comment:

`Avant-garde arts
`pooh, pooh mere farts
`When writing variously,
`It`s far more `fit`
`To shovel sh - t
`And call it poetry.

(Just adapting an oldie about fitness for tasks)

Oh wouldn't it be so much easier if there was someone - some authoritative voice of - I don't know - say a university professor, a public school English master, an arts minister... who would come along and put us right about what was poetry and what wasn't poetry...

...then all would be nice and right with the world and there would still be some crumpets left for tea...

but they don't exist... or they do but nobody's listening... and people are deciding for themselves what they think is poetry and what isn't...

...and you still don't have to like it, it can still be terrible... some poets set my teeth on edge...

No wonder people have so little time for poetry any more`

Is he right?...(about people having so little time for poetry)

This was Harry's thread question. Just steering back on course.

I suspect that more people are writing poetry than at any time in history, actually. Whether that poetry will gain the approval of your average Daily Mail reader (whose idea of poetry has probably not advanced much from 'O to be in England...' and Kipling's 'If'...) is another matter, and not one that I lose any sleep over. The day the Daily Heil has anything useful to say about poetry (or indeed, anything else) is the day before the end of the world.

There is loads of poetry on the Internet, loads of books are being published and read and attendances at readings and performances are pretty good.

'Reports of my death have been exaggerated' someone said.

Graham, thanks for getting the thread on course again.

I`ve just read Hart for the third time.

Disregarding Hart`s politics (and the loads of poetry-and also almost everything else - on the internet) I think that Hart was right.

He suggests the reason is that the Duffy style of poetry would rather write about a gas meter than the Queen`s
birthday...what does any one else think?

So basically Harry you'll stick to your opinion despite evidence to the contrary. Not untypical for Daily Mail reader.

CAD's job as poet laureate is to tie in the Daily Mail-esque 'version' of poetry with the establishment's wishes.

Hart should ignore the laureates, basically. Focus on what's going on across the country. Art is everywhere.

Poetry with the establishment's stamp of approval will always need a pop/mainstream edge to it. Until anything changes this will remain.

If you look at the blogosphere there is plenty of evidence that many millions - yes millions of people - write poetry, and a few even read it! There are probably more poetry blogs than there are porn sites. That tells us something. It is a very naughty habit some of us are still obsessed with. Mind you, some say that about poetry too. Boom! boom!