I`ve just been studying the poem that won this year`s National Poetry competition.

The poem is specifically `about` a novel and I wondered to what extent the novel informs the way poems are written today. The novel has - for the a fairly lengthy period now - been the major means of transmitting literary `art`to the educated classes, and this poem to a significant extent mimics a kind of short `chapter` form and is (of course) in prose. The `theme` also mimics the generally accepted interpretation of the particular novel with (for me) only the `parenthesis` of the water closing around `Woolfe` really coming across as `poetry`.

Woolfe has - I`m told -been `taken up` by the feminist movement and I wonder if this poem was aimed at them.

More generally:
Is the modern novel responsible for the `prosetisation`of todays poetry competitions at the national competition level and the virtual disappearance of Rhyme?(try to imagine anything Rhymed having a dog`s chance at that level)Or is it that our educated betters are more comfortable with attenuated novels.

We are all aware that blank verse can make good poems but it`s the style of much of this modern stuff that grates me.

What does everyone think?

Fashion and fad are notorious companions. Those seeking to maketheir way will certainly look to what is succeeding and emulate it. And those who write in a certain style will encourage others of the same disposition. Prose poetry is popular because it can be practised without the need to follow the disciplines that govern the rest. Indeed, this is often given as a good reason for its rightful place in the poetry universe. Having said that, if the poet has the right subject matter and the skill/grasp of language to create something fine, prose will succeed - and deservedly so. There are some prose poems I admire very much. But how much modern emphasis is being placed on the old skills of rhyme, scan and metre and the discipline of language they require to flourish in this day and age? My own view is that verse that works well is more satisfying that prose, much more so when the latter often seems so close to the paragraphs from a provincial newspaper report mixed with extracts from some "Dear Babs" advice column. The subject matter highlighted by Harry comes as no surprise when considering the prevalence of prose and its practitioners today. Hasn't the present poet laureate written a recently published novel that seeks to provide
a sequel to "Treasure Island"? The irony is in the
difference between R.L. Stevenson's verse and A. Motion's output.

Thanks Harry, for leading to me finally having a look at the National Poetry Society's website. Isn't it dire! Here we are in April, and it promises to put some news up about what is happening in 2012 when there is anything. It manages to talk about poetry on the page, and elsewhere without any mention anywhere of the huge increase in Open mic events, in fact you would not know that there are any open mic events. It hasn't been updated for some time.
Actually Andrew Motion isn't poet laureate any more. Thats why he has had time to write a novel I guess.
I don't know the answer to the basic question about prose and poetry. I have written some poetry without a rhyme scheme, and sometimes my rhythms are more like speech than verse, but some of the prose I write would be poetry if I broke it up into shorter lines, I suppose.
I think the modern novel is influenced by workshops on how to write a best selling modern novel, as they seem to come in flocks with the same cover photo, the same historical period, the same division into characters and events and bits of historical detail, and almost the same quotes and reviews on the back cover. I cant be bothered to read them they look so formulaic.

Thanks Freda - my mind was in neutral! Accept the word
"recent" instead.
But to his credit, Mr Motion's novel "Silver" received a good review in one newspaper I read. But see what I mean about "emulating"? It's like the movies...sequels preferred to original thought! 007 suffers the same treatment long after his own creator's death.

"prosetry" has its place within the poetry spectrum but for me it comes way down the list. The ideas and subject matter can be awe inspiring but without the added dimensions of metre and rhyme some of the scope for enjoyment is lacking.. I seek out novels for a storyline not for the writers skill in metre, rhyme and form.
Prosetry has neither the rules of poetry nor the rules of novels as it's mantra.It is fine as a vehicle for displaying an anti-establishment, reactionary desire to break out of the mould but as more and more people jump on the bandwagon and become dedicated followers of fashion the 'new style' becomes passé.
Sequels may not have independance of thought but at least we know it is a sequel and can take it or leave it.
I would say that in some respects prosetry more often reflects the techniques of modern television with the camera angle changing/ panning/ spinning so frequently that, just as when reading much of today's prosetry, my head spins too.
Also, however complex a novel's
plot, there is usually a thread held together by conventions of grammar.
Since the modern free verse form appears to have no such conventions
it is often more difficult to extract the meaning and instead of being a vehicle for enjoyment, it is a medium for frustration and discontent.
I recently spoke to a young, newly qualified graduate (honours in creative writing) He informed me that his poetry tutor at university had told him that on no account should his poetry end-rhyme.
There seems to be little hope for glory for those of us from the old school - but we obviously have skills that are beyond the reach of prosetry writers - and we have fun with our words.

I guess the poetry "tutor" mentioned
by Yvonne was following fashion and
fad - the path of least resistance,
let alone discipline. Those who can't...won't!

These last two blogs have made me think of something puzzling.

The judges of National poetry competitions are usually fairly highly educated, probably in what used to be called the poetical `canon` (which was overwhelmingly composed of rhythmical and rhymed work) Why therefore do they almost always ignore rhyme, and works of a more traditional rhythm?

Is it `literary cognitive dissonance`caused by clinging to the fashion for the break-up of form started by Pound and Eliot (for other reasons rather than form?)

Despite the bias against them , it is beyond belief that there are not some excellent well structured poems sent to these competitions, but I get the impression that the judges are afraid of going against the fashionable flow and being criticised by their peers.

Poetry blogs like this one, because of their general accessibilty, can play a role in all
this by affording a potentially greater audience than the usual vanity publishing.

When writing poetry I find that I have an "old style" mentality that I constantly try to make more relevant (modern if you will).
I have long thought that if novelists were better poets there wouldn't be so much padding that one often finds in many books these days.
Take Susan Hill "The Beacon" and Julian Barnes "A sense of an Ending" as two brilliantly concise books but criticized for their brevity. There is lot to learn from poets who necessarily use few words.
I'm afraid rhyming is too old school to be cool these days.

A description of the winner’s poem as a condensed novel seems apt.
Fills the modern need for quick soundbites.

Today’s judges do not appear to have an ear for the sound of words.

There can still be music in the sound of poetry without rhyme and strict rhythm, which are not my style, but it is odd that not one of their choices have either.

The fashion element of this is obvious when you read that nine out of eleven of their picks is by authors already established in the poetry system with published works.

I'm afraid, Yvonne, I agree with the tutor. End rhymes had a good run, but it's now so old-hat it just looks dusty and dead. Unless it's done by someone with some vim & verve about them (George Szirtes, say, or the American poet AE Stallings), all you end up with is dull verse.

That doesn't mean that you can't have form; all poems have it, it's just less obvious, less tum-te-tum and less like a 19th century parlour game.

Asking all poets to use rhyme and metre is rather like asking all musicians to just play Viennese waltzes.

There should be room for all sorts. To discard a tried, tested and pleasing style because it is "old" is like ignoring your ancestors. The past makes us what we are -in all senses of the definition. Of course, it is human nature to seek something else if our experience has not been beneficial or pleasing to us, but to throw out the silver in favour of pewter doesn't make much sense in the long term. Rhythm and rhyme have earned their place, be it in poetry or song, and the best of both contain them in quality. The "standards" of song are superior examples that will be heard when many of today's efforts are a subject for passing conjecture as to how they came to be written at all. I think the same will apply to the world of poetry despite the best efforts of some to promote one style at the expense of the other. Quality will always stand the test of time, not needing to rely upon passing fancy or contemporary taste.(with the emphasis all too often on "con").

"To discard a tried, tested and pleasing style because it is "old" is like ignoring your ancestors. "

Quite. Things started going downhill when somebody decided to import that new-fangled iambic pentameter from the continent. Bring back alliteration and smoky mead halls and stories about dragons, say I!

Ever since the thirties there is (as someone said) a veritable `cat`s cradle` of poetic styles available for use. (my own method is to look at what`s in front of me as honestly as possible)

What I`m after Is the reason for the absence of traditional, well turned, poetical poems among the winners of national competitions -I`m talking about an absence.

No one wants us any more, Harry; we who were brought up on Palgrave's Golden Treasury. Half a League onward, I say. It's ageist is what it is. And I always thought that, when I grew old, I would be in my purple patch, slippered pantoums, all that.
Hang on though, don't these rapper chaps use some of that rhyme/metre, heroic epic stuff?
I think we should be told.

There are a few rhyming metrical poets who still have something to say. But frankly, most of them don't. Unless you've actually got a new perspective on it, what's the point in doing it, apart from as a kind of polite middle class diversion like sewing samplers and making cupcakes?

And 'free verse' has been around since at least the middle of the 19th century. Most of you weren't even born when Pound wrote Y Lume Spento. That all you had in school was Palgrave's Golden Pisswater, is the fault of the education system: the same one that taught you to genuflect to the dear old queen and that God was an Englishman.

There is an analogy concerning the state of modern classical music and modern poetry and their relationships with tried and tested styles. The desire to "break free" and do something new is fine but not at the expense of what has proved popular and enduring. That is the problem with much of today's classical music: written by those who can't compose a tune or its variations to save their lives! So, they band together and ridicule those who can as old-fashioned, past their sell-by-date and all the rest. Worse, they are only content when preventing this awkward "won't go" school from having any public platform at all. That is the most deplorable aspect. It is the equivalent of the tone-deaf tuning the piano...unaware they are the Les Dawsons of the keyboard.

Fascinating subject though it be, my point wasn`t about the battle between, the end stopped, musical, rhythm and rhyme stuff and the way-out, idiosyncratic, pick out your own interpretation stuff. Good or banal poetry can be written in either kind.

It`s about the fact that, in what was until recently a modern, free rolling poetry world, rhymed and rhythmic poems have apparently almost ceased being considered by (or sent to)national poetry contests. And that - far from the opposite idiosyncratic, style of poem taking its place - the almost only type of poem being considered (and submitted) seemsto be the attenuated novel-style `prosey` pieces.

I would suggest that, no matter what kind of poetry you like, this has to be a restricting problem for poetry as a whole.

What can be done about it?

The Novel was itself seen as a new and modern form, thats where the name came from. I see the pursuit of meaninglessness in modern art (non representational) and modern poetry (non rhythmical, non rhyming) as the same faddish, follow the crowd thinking. What works for me is something that has a clear shape to it and lots of echoes and intricacies in it, which when you read it aloud flows along, but catches you unawares with sudden realisations that there is more going on and you want to hear it again or see it on the page to catch what you half missed the first time. Art arises out of struggle with the materials- words, sound, syntax.. to reach what you want to say.

Harry you've answered the question yourself really. It's called competition!
Totally unrelated I know, but I fish for trout on some of the loveliest rivers in England. A true trout fisherman wouldn't dream of fishing in a competition, content with enjoying the music and movement of the countryside as part of the real job of trying to catch wild brown trout.
Add the element of competition (apart from that between the man and the fish of course) and the result is altogether more unsatisfactory.
It is my main gripe against performance poetry really. Why can't poets just be content with writing the stuff and letting other appreciate it without competing in a bloody slam or whatever.
Sorry, back under my stone quickly.........

I regard the novel form as ( generally ) an enumeration of events, a time line, even if not always sequential. whereas poetry can not only do that - in whatever 'poetic' format it chooses - bit can also just enccapsulate a moment, a sentiment.
We could, start our own national competition for rhyming poetry!

"What can be done about it?"
Well, you could always set up your own competition. Lifetime supply of Werther's Originals and a subscription to the People's Friend as the first prize?

Sadly, I can hear the patronising "oh dear...it's old" being spouted by the "modern" establishment when politely requested to give tried and proven styles their place. No more than that...their place! You would think that rhyme and metre represented a dire threat to the "new order", wouldn't you? Perhaps, in the right hands, it does...hence the determination to keep it out of the way before its lasting appeal makes modern practitioners appear merely parvenus and poseurs in the long term. Harry - the point is WHY there is such overthostility from ONE school of poetry, intent on casting the rest into oblivion, beyond the knowledge and awareness of many people. Hence my analogy with modern classical music which has faced a similar attitude. Recently, I perused an entry on WOL which, except for fashionable "indentation" to make it appear poetical, reads like a report from someone's personal diary. Is THIS the style that seeks to dominate the "old" disciplines? No wonder its disciples are so vociferous in its cause. It's so easy! I understand, but I do not excuse the narrow self-interest for one good reason: it is damaging to poetry in the round.
But the wheel will turn.

What I like best about writing free verse is that anyone can do it, even me. I need no understanding of metre or syllabic management and best of all no-one can tell me a word doesn't fit or is a poor rhyme or hiccups the line. It is safe.

See, it all started like this.
I bought this grand piano.
But because I couldn’t play a note
all that came out was discordant sh*te.
So next I decided I’d swim the Channel.
Luckily the Coastguard
picked me up about 20 yards from Dover beach,
what with me drowning
as I’d never learned to swim.
And when I approached the circus
to be a lion-tamer,
the ring-master suggested that
I f*ck off
and that if I wanted to do something
where I needed no skill or experience at all
I should try writing free verse,
and no-one would be any the wiser.
Et voila.

Perhaps, some day, in a future no-one can yet prophecy or comprehend, poetry will truly diverge. All poetry with any attempt or allusion to metre, rhyme, rhythm or any other known and recognised traditional device will be known as "poetry." Everything else will be categorised as "Walings."

A.E....and all those seeking the New
Jerusalem promised by the prophets of free verse will worship at the
"Waling Wall"?
Just a thought.

Yep - I think traditional rhyme and metre is well and truly out of fashion. Unfortunately its cause isn't helped by the tons of amateurish poetry you find written in this vein. I think you have to be very skilled indeed to write good rhyming poetry - unless you are going for the tongue in cheek, comedy style.

Conversely, there is plenty of free verse which is more akin to prose and often too self absorbed for my liking. In my opinion, free verse needs to have some kind of flow if it is to be considered poetry. It's hard to put a finger on what makes a non rhyming poem flow - it's an innate thing. A lot of free verse you read doesn't often make sense, let alone flow.

I'll just add that I think it's easier to hide lack of skill in free verse, than it is in traditional poetry. A forced rhyme sticks out like a sore thumb - particularly if the poem is beautiful in other areas. Bumps can be hidden more easily in prose.

What with `Werthers Originals` and`Les Dawsons of the keyboards` this is getting to be a chuckle a minute!

But to get back to the point: Does everyone agree with me that the absence of what is described as the well constructed, rhythmic or rhymed poem from any national competitions is bad for poetry as a whole?

Perhaps a national competition run soley for this kind of poetry would be a good thing? (it would at least answer Grahams fear about rhyming being `too old school to be cool these days`)

Performing, I think, can only be good. it brings back actual human contact into the texting world and voice back into it. (and it gives you a kick!)

I`m off on holiday for a week now..keep on slogging folks.

Just like to add that Isobel`s two blogs make some very pertinent points about the two types of poetry.

I wonder if we could sus out what we mean by `flow` in poetry (free or
traditional) then we might identify some sort of an arena wherin we could home in to what we so often feel but can`t express?

I think it's sad that poetry written in a traditional style should be considered old hat. I can appreciate that archaic language sounds out of place in modern poetry but I'd hate to see formally structured poetry disappear.

I like your idea that there should be a competition specifically for traditional poetry, Harry. Perhaps we could run one on WOL at some point, like we did with the nonsense comp.

It would be very hard to put a formula on 'flow'. For me, it's the combination of sounds and syllables that make a piece of writing performance worthy - the difference between german and french...

bring on the traditional poetry comp (Anyone for sonnets?). Win

Reveran'.

I'm in complete agreement with the spirit of what is being asked and implied by Harry, and in accordance of much said by M.C, Yvonne and Freda too.

However I do think people are missing a trick here. The issue is not one of rhyme or even of meter with or without rhyme (it's bigger than that)..

This relates to most, if not all poetic devices and forms.

Alliteration, Consonance, Assonance, slant rhyme, eye rhyme, sprung verse, extended metaphor, closed metrical forms, mixed use of rhyme and denial of rhyme, internal rhyme, metaphysics, all forms of open metrical poems etc.

ALL of the tool set above and much, much more in the way of poetics are so far away from respected to almost be blacklisted. It seems it is an absolute no-no to write poetically whenit comes to modern poetry and it's gate keepers.

For the most part it isn't a free verse issue, that is an overlapping point.

Nearly all of what to me makes a poem, something that is skilled and crafted is foregone in the pursuit of modern ideals.

I even think it a grave insult to say that these modern practitioners are writing the prose poem, they're not doing that, they're not good enough to do that!!

R S Thomas wrote brilliant prose poetry, so too did Philip Larkin...Andrew Motion too. Their poetry has much prose about it, but their language highly skilled and nuanced. The aforementioned all used technical skills, all exhibited a profound understanding of poetics.

I would ask anyone here who has an interest in the point I am making to;

read two or three poems of the above said poets and compare that to what we have seen in the national poetry competition.

I would argue that the national poetry competition is an extension of what we find in bloodaxe anthologies and what we generally see in contemporary poetry and that is....

Emperors new clothes drivel. It gravitates between pure prose with little poetic value, condensed prose for a sound bite culture and prose with a few (usually an end line) poetic mouthings.. In fact I would argue that had most of the winning/commended entries to the national poetry competition simply appeared part way through novels...nobody would have bat an eyelid.

People are told they are poems, so for the most part people accept that they are poems.

Damien Hirst placed a shark in a tank of formaldehyde and claimed that it was art. As the art critic Brian Sewell once said, just because Damien claims that it is art, it doesn't make it so..

For me so to here with poetry.

Theses people may have written interesting prose, even in some instances poetic prose (though not fit to kiss the boots of F Scott Fitzgerald or even Ray Bradbury). But prose poems? Not for me...not poetry at all in my eyes.

Very sad that we have dumbed down our art form, or at least the gatekeepers have.

P.S

The above statement also applies to the types of poetry that Steven likes. The avant-garde is also pretty much black-listed iwhen it comes to the modern gate keepers.

Anyone who wants to go anywhere with such competitions must write in prose, non poetics, no poetic devices etc.

The same is happening across the board. I would ask people to go check out the winning and commended entries to the troubadour competition....same situation.

P.S to the P.S

My reason for writing this is simple. I love to read great poems and I feel I am denied this opportunity at a national level. I believe that great poets and poems are out there. Just we're not getting to hear their voices.

It's sad because it means too often having to look back or listen locally to hear and read great work.

All this is just my opinion, if someone doesn't agree with me that is fine, you can disagree with me. I claim no absolute right. I make no claim to objective reality.

If anyone wants to disagree or make their own point...great.

Just don't come into this thread to insult me for having and expressing my opinion....cigarette style warning done.

FORM and Function: I agree with Steve Black- However 'rhyme and rhythm' can be spectacularly effective but sometimes at a cost- forcing an inclusion of rhyme etc that replaces a more pertinent expression. (As an aside -I abhor the 'sing-song' voice used by many spoken poets akin to 'folk' singers with a finger in their ears.)
'Conversational' style poetry has a freedom of expression and expression is everything in poetry. Having said that I often race through ideas (it often shows I know) when a more measured effort (including rhythm etc)improves the result.
I tend towards function but dabble in form. Tommy

"Alliteration, Consonance, Assonance, slant rhyme, eye rhyme, sprung verse, extended metaphor, closed metrical forms, mixed use of rhyme and denial of rhyme, internal rhyme, metaphysics, all forms of open metrical poems etc."

If you can't see or hear this in an awful lot of contemporary poetry already, then I suggest you go get your ears syringed and a new pair of glasses. The number of sonnets (experimental or traditional) being written alone is enough to make a mountain.

Not that there isn't an awful lot of boring farts in the poetry world (eg Andrew Motionless...) but to say that somehow, people are not using all the tools in the tool box (plus a lot of tools they didn't have before that...) is frankly nonsense.

Oh, and while we're at it, just because Brian Swill says its not art don't make it not art. I can't personally stand Damian Hirst's work, because it's no real advance on Duchamp's Fountain; but if he says it's art, it's art.

I've just read a brilliant book of 'prose poems' by a British avant garde poet called Tim Allen; so as far as I'm concerned, it's poetry.

In fact, I just reread the winner of the National Poetry Competition and it's basically iambic pentameter blank verse, very enjambed and conversational, with some not very prominent alliteration and internal rhyme.

Much like most mainstream poetry in fact. Nothing to do with 'free verse' on the whole, which is a whole other set of disciplines (and if you want to know how to do it, see Ezra Pound's essay A Few Don'ts.)

It's only when I read discussions like this that I realize just how much I still have left to learn.

In the words of Harry Hill: 'Damien Hirst V Joseph Beuys:...FIIIIIIGHT!!' (and as JB has 'boxing gloves' I'm backing him)

Plus, of course, one got the feeling that Joseph Beuys actually had something to say and wasn't just in it to state the obvious ('hey folks, we're all gonna die...') while making a wodge of cash...

Steven,

I The Window syllables

It was Virginia’s charcoaled stare 8 and not iambic
that put me off: her disappointment 8/9
in me, the reader, before I even started. 12
So I walked into the exam without her: 11 still not iambic
without the easel, the skull or the shawl, 10 still not iambic
the well-turned stocking, Minta’s 7
missing brooch. In the hall I watched 8
the future show its pulse and all the girls, 10 still not iambic
the girls who’d read the book, set off 8
together, lined up at desks and rowing. 9

ii Time Passes

You need a daubière and too much time – 9
three days’ absence from the plot. Rump 8
bathed overnight in brandy, a stout red 9
brought back from France. The liquor’s 6
boiled once, added back to beef, calf’s foot, 9
lardons, les legumes. For six hours – or more – 10
it idles. It can’t be over-cooked. It will not 12
spoil. At table, a stream of consciousness 10
breaks out. And it rains. It rains. If not 9
the stew, what was the woman on about. 10

iii The Lighthouse

The year I gave the book another go, 9
[the year my mother died], I learned 8
everything big happens in parenthesis – 8/9
marriage, birth, The War, poetry. Is it the full 10
manuscript or just the bits in the middle 10
that count. Is it the woman at the window, 11
marking the hours, from cover to cover – 8
or these few lines: that as she eased out from 10
the bank and into the water the brackets 11
of it opened and closed about her. 9


I would say on the whole your counting has been questionable Steven. If you think the above represents iambic pentameter blank verse, then all I can say is...you don't seem to know what iambic pentameter blank verse is.

Enjambment with or without caesura still leaves metrical lines ;) One look at shakespeare will tell you that lol.

dear me.

Of course we can see the above does not fit the pattern of iambic pentameter in terms of basic syllable count, but much more than that. The words simply are not chosen on the basis of the syllabic composition. I take it you are aware that iambic pentameter (and metrics generally) is much more than a question of syllables and based upon syllabic stress within correctly chosen words?

There is nothing here that says iambic pentameter blank verse.

Here you go, here is the link..you can go check out her reading- see if you can find any tell tale signs of meter

http://www.poetrysociety.org.uk/content/competitions/npc/mcvety/

lol

If you can hear meter I fear you must hear meter in everything Haha.

As for alliteration, if you think that poem uses prominent alliteration I think you are seriously making a strech. There is a small amount of light alliteration. Nothing remotely like that seen when referencing strong head rhyme/alliteration in poetry, say as found on the open mic poetry scene or in traditional poetry.


As for sonnets- do me a favour!

Sonnets do not abound when it comes to the national poetry competition or to the troubadour competitions- not to the winning or commended poems. Neither do they abound in the The Poetry Book Society Anthologies etc.

Of course you will find them- but not in significant numbers at the upper end of national and international competitions.

And please for expletives sake don't try and make this into a free verse versus form issue, or skies above us a rhyme versus non rhyme issue...it's neither!!!!

Not if we are looking at the bigger picture.

This is a prose versus poetry issue.

Free verse is NOT avant garde, it has been here a VERY long time. Most of us here write free verse either some of the time or, all of the time. At least 60% of my poetry is free verse.

The point here is that poetry has got so far from being poetic that it is arguable to question whether or not it is even poetic or poetry anymore.

Free verse, blank verse, rhyme etc...not the point.

Nearly all, or at least most the entries that make up top level competition commended or winning entries stem from one form that is some way more towards or past prose than the prose poem. (prose poems- can be brilliant and brilliantly poetic- as can be read by picking up RS Thomas or Philip Larkin).

When I read RS Thomas or Larkin the flavour of the language or the run of the lines gives the feel of prose, but there is no question we are dealing with poetry.

That is not so with most of what we are dealing with here. Most of what we are dealing with in these competitions is much more prosey, it often feels like extracts taken directly from the middle of prose novels. More a case of poetic prose at best...but not prose poetry.

Hopefully you can see the distinction.

And Steven. Your more avant garde taste also does not get a look in with our gate keepers. So I say to you again, please do not try and argue for aguments sake.

This is not and will not be a free verse versus anything debate- it is not about that.

P.S

Also all that is being said here, is that there is no quarter given, nothing afforded to poems that seem to emmanate from a differing process and background. Nobody is saying that the style in vogue has to be thrown out or that there should be a revolution (though sod me- I would call for it lol).

All that people are saying is that nothing beyond a very set idea is being accepted.

Harry asks are poems that he would like to see even being entered into these competitions. I would say (with near certainty) that they are. They just don't get anywhere...and I mean anywhere.

No matter how good poems are that stem from traditional or avant garde styles. No matter how original or how experimental...they don't figure. They go unseen.

Because the very best of poems that use poetic devices with any significance, the very best of structured poetry, the very best of rhymed poetry, the very best of experimental avant garde poetry that plays with context and syntax...none of it is favoured by the judges.

All the commended and winning poems, like the poetry book society anthologies etc...they all read the same. They all seem to be going to the same workshop.

And of course what do tomorrows bright young things do to make it in this world?

They write towards what they know is accepted and on the merry-go-round we go. It is self perpetuating until the style and fads change.

---------

A good poet chooses the right tool for the right job. Poetic devices each one or the lack therof is a choice. Differing forms including free verse are choices. Each comes with their own stricture and their own potential advantage. The right tool for the right job.

Not the same tool- for every job.

ciggy warning in case a certain person walks into the thread.

When expressing an opinion I do so (beyond certain statements of fact) in the knowledge that other opinions exist and I claim no universal right or objective ownership of what is said to be 'right'.

"It was Virginia’s charcoaled stare"
- / - / - / - /

is how I read the line ("was" being a weaker stress than all the rest, but still a stress) - sounds pretty iambic to me. Also, most of the lines have 4 0r 5 stresses distributed throughout the line. Not strict iambic, if you want the poem to sound like a metronome, rather than a poem. But everything allowed in an iambic line.

"the future show its pulse and all the girls,"
- / - / - / - / - /

I'm sorry, but how is that not iambic?

Essentially, it varies between 8 and 11 sylables with only one 12 sylables - seems to me to be approaching and moving away from a basic iambic pulse all the way through. Rather in the way TS Eliot recommended in fact...

Even the 12 sylable line still has five stresses - as in 'sprung rhythm'.

Essentially, the poem is built around a variable iambic line, with 4 or usually 5 stresses per line. It's very 'conversational' and is probably like a lot of verse around at the moment; but it isn't prose.

I don't suppose my avant garde tastes do get a look in with these gatekeepers; which is why I don't much send poems to the Poetry Review. But there are other gates you can walk through.

I find myself in the odd position of having to defend a style I don't much care for; but I do quite like this poem. Not a lot, as a certain magician might say, but enough to want to see how it works. Much mainstream poetry is based around a very loose iambic pulse, with a similar number of beats per line. For someone like me that can get terribly boring; but it's still poetry, not prose.

Do you really want me to carry on and answer the little picture stuff Steven?

I mean I have spoken about the much bigger picture and real issues here. Issues that should interest you much more than this.....it's where the real debate is IMO.

Can we focus on the broad brush strokes and the bigger picture debate, or do I have to detail your metrical misunderstandings one by one?

"You need a dau-bi-ere and too much time" - 10 sylables, by the way, and iambic.

"Brought back from France. The liquor's" 5 stresses, 4 curtailed iambs and one full iamb. Pentameter.

Let's call it sprung rhythm then.

Let's focus on the bigger picture and real issue. Something that affects, you as much as me, Harry as much as M.C, Freda, Yvonne etc...as much as Isobel..Graham, Tommy.

The poetry in these competitions is, for the most part drawn from a very limited particular style(s). As a result we don't get to read and hear some great poetic voices. We don't get a wide enough variety of poetry and poetic styles.

How much inspiration and pleasure is out there, but denied us?

It doesn't affect me at all. I never enter competitions. I publish in magazines that are interested in non-mainstream writing.

It's all out there - maybe not in the competitions and in the 'major' publishers; but in the small presses, on the Internet, in 'reading series' all over the country.

And if you looking for rhyme - see the Guardian Review last Saturday. Full of it it was.

I just wanted to say that my idea of iambic pentameter seems to be a lot adrift to that of some other poets - even published ones. Anyone can take a poem and chop it up into lines of ten/eleven syllables - particularly if they use bizarre enjambement. I find those kind of poems very distracting. I look for meaning within my poetry - that meaning becomes disjointed when line breaks are made just for form.

Maybe there are no hard and fast rules - I'm not about to eat and digest any technical poetry books to prove a point. I do think there are good and bad examples of all forms of poetry though.

Quote
It doesn't affect me at all. I never enter competitions.
Unquote

Nobody here has stated or implied that they have entered the said competitions, that isn't the point being made.

The point being made relates to the poetry we get to read, that is touted by the gate keepers of poetry in the UK. It seems quite narrow to suggest you are not affected, how do you know whether or not you are affected by the intrinsic "lack of influence", lack of poetry and variety that may affect you?

Mmm it seems to me that the only way to make such a statement with any certainty, would be to have experienced what has happened and what could have happened, something that is if course not possible.

Either way, we know that the status quo is something that is affecting other people. At the very least it is evidenced by other people in this thread.

Hey Isobel, when you say you think there are good and bad examples of all poetry, I take it you mean generally?

If that is the case I would agree....totally! Which is why we should see a greater range of poetry and style of poetry in these competitions. We should have access to differing great poems that can inspire us all.

If you mean, lots of differing types of poetry, good and bad...in the context of recognition and represented in these poetry competitions....then I would strongly disagree (but guessing you don't mean this).

As for that poem. It isn't metered., not that Steven will listen. Not unless you take any syllable number you like and look for a pattern lol.

7 syllable to 12 syllable lines, arguable tetrameter mixed with arguable pentameter and a little trimeter, male and female ending lines etc haha.

Then you consider the read and the word selection.

Very funny the idea of it being a metrical poem...simply because you have a range of syllables between 7 and 12 lol.

The same logic could be applied alliterative Saxon verse :)

Small potato though that is.

I never said it was a 'metrical poem' - I said that it was based around an iambic pulse, not that it was 'strictly' metrical. Strictly metrical poems are as boring as metronomes - "Write according to the musical phrase, not the metronome" as E.P. would put it.

Sprung rhythm in other words. Without the alliteration and the weird syntax and the allusions to Welsh metrics of a Gerard Manley Hopkins, though.

I've never come across a good selfconsciously 'traditional poem.' Poetry from the past doesn't count; it was part of their artistic DNA. It's like 'trad jazz' musicians in the local pub thinking they can sound like Satchmo.

There are, however, some good formalists around, just as Chris Barber & Humphrey Littleton are just fine musicians who transcend the musical forms they play in. I'd still rather have Coltrane, mind you.

I'm going to have to start getting up earlier. Harry, this is all your fault!

The poem is written in English, which is a syllabic stress timed language. And that Steven is all you are in effect positing at.

The poem was not constructed on the basis of metrics, syllables were not counted. That is why, when you do a syllable counted it is all over the shop.

Simply because English is syllabic, you can do what the poet didn't and count the lines and say hey that there is tetrameter and that there is pentameter, and that there is trimeter and it jumps between them and jumps between male and female endings of those meters etc. you can do that, but you can do that with many free verse poems. You can do it with loads of poems that are rhymed, but not metered. You can do it with tons of poems where the given poet typically writes certain line lengths or writes to a sonic unit etc. Jee whizz you could do it with a letter from your bank or alliterative Saxon verse.

You can do it mainly cause it is English lol

Non of which validates your point.

The poem was never written with meter or form as part of its plan. Not unless the poets understanding of metrics and mathematics was so wayward to stretch all credibility beyond breaking point.

No metrics....Nadda lol

Having argued the small potato into mash haha I will step away.

The bigger point that was made, originally by others and something I also commented upon....that's where the real debate was and remains.

Eating lumpy mash Chris hehe

P.S

Anyone know what cough medicine is decent for chest infections?
Wheezy laugh

Yes - I'd agree that if all poetry were strictly metred it could become monotonous. That's why all the rest is so important - imagery, assonance, internal rhyme etc.

I meant my comment about good and bad poetry in a general sense. You see good and bad examples of free verse, Iambic Pentameter, Haiku; whatever form you look at will be represented in good and bad ways. It's a lot easier to see that a traditional poem is badly executed - not so easy to justify with free verse - hence the idea that anything goes... Just because it hasn't broken any rules dosn't always make it good poetry though.

For me, the message of the poem is more important than the mechanism. If you are going to do it in rhyme and metre, do so without damaging the mood or the tone of the subject matter. If you are going to do it in free verse, then let the message flow, pay some attention to the words you are slinging together.

Of course it all boils down to personal preference, like most things - one man's meat being another man's poison, to use a well worn phrase.

Agree with 99.9% of that Isobel.

Your last comment about personal preference hits the nail on the head when it comes to the big picture and issue highlighted in this thread.

At the top level we should see all differing styles of poetry represented in national and international poetry competitions. These poems are often what results in collections, the poems that make there way into the treasured volumes of anthologies that claim to represent the best poetry the world has to offer.

If it all emanates from one or a very limited number if styles then that is downright not what the poets and the poetry public wants. We need variety, we need inspiration and that for all of us comes in slightly differing ways and dare I say forms (including free verse, including rhyme, including etc etc).

P.S

Anyone got a Lockett or a tune?

The discussions about the various forms have been educational but I agree with Isobel about the message being the essential aspect of a poem. If you have nothing to say that engages the reader, it doesn't matter a ha'penny damn what form is adopted. That only matters when the content is worth our attention and then the form can be considered according to its merits - or otherwise - just as motor mechanics love to enthuse about the way an engine is put together when buyers may value only its purpose: to transport them to the destination required, achieving what is termed customer satisfaction. Poets must beware of writing for each other and concentrate on the wider audience...and competitions should reflect this whenever possible.

I have just been catching up with this marathon but very interesting discussion. I have never gone in for competitions much myself. I would like to see my poems 'out there' and being read by people, but its all money and time, and I really enjoy reading them myself to audiences. I am thinking of entering the Templar competition, but then I thought maybe I should leave out anything with rhyme or rhythm, and the rest don't seem to belong together much. If there was a competition for only structured poetry it might be seen as not proving anything, as it would be segregated from the unpoetic poetry that appear in these places.
Reading poetry aloud brings out the value of attention to sound pattern and rhythm. Audiences enjoy listening and don't lose the thread.
Of course it is no use just imposing a structure for the sake of it. Stress can make a sound or a meaning stand out. Repetition can drive home a point. The quality of plosive consonants can splutter and snap and round vowel sounds can produce different effects to squeaky ones.
All this is to serve meaning, and the choice of traditional styles is to reassure and calm the listener, so you can slip in radical ideas, while I find the burden of radical styles is often cliche'd ideas or boring sentiments.
If you only write for the page you would be more concerned with the look of the words than the sounds, but when I read something like the above poem about, or not about, Virginia Woolf, I can't work out what the writers intention was except to meander on until it looks substantial enough to send off to a competition.
Maybe I need to do a stylistic analysis of it, to find out what is going on.

who's gonna push who off this sodden wall?

Freda, when you have done your stylistic analysis, will you let me in on the secret?
Chris I am clean out of locketts but I can write you a tune.
Oh, sorry, have I strayed from the point?
Actually many points have been made in this thread and there seems to be a quorum agreeing that the 'poetry' gaining the greatest public placement and prominence these days is far too narrow in its style to be a fair representation of what poetry should encompass.
The question of what to do about it has been raised and the response from several of us has been 'Hold a comp. where trad values in poetry are required'. This would have a captive audience on WOL but then surely we would want to subsequently reach a wider audience.
Who amongst us have the greatest access to Joe Public and The Media?

The educational and informative
entries in this discussion have made
it a pleasure for yours truly to
follow. Thanks for the humour and
the erudition.

"the choice of traditional styles is to reassure and calm the listener"

Because of course we wouldn't want anybody to be shaken awake by poetry...

We wouldn't want anybody to be made to think by poetry...

Or to feel things they've never felt before...

Or to do anything except put on a nice warm jumper, sit in front of a nice log fire, with a cup of nice hot cocoa, vote Tory because you know it makes sense, buy what the TV tells you to buy, and go to bed early like nice little consumers...

That is the kind of all encompassing nonsense that we have come to expect Steven ;). I mean of course, avant grade poetry is always challenging and alwaysmakes you think. And any poem or poetry that uses any poetic devices that you do not approve of is intellectually lacking.

Keep repeating the same dogma/mantra to yourself.

We save the best lies for ourselves ;)

P.S

Given your comments here are sufficiently off topic, it makes me wonder if you offer such comments unsolicited, perhaps to people stood at bus stops or maybe on the high street? I could picture you on a soap box with a mega phone.

The world is nigh if rhyme be used! j/k

I was standing at the bus stop the other day when this bloke came up to me and started telling ...

Flippin' 'eck, what a palaver!
Steven, your erudition knows few bounds, but: Pisswater? You are thinking of Drinkwater perhaps, and all that washing, every day, week in, week out.
I couldn't care less what anyone else thinks, I like what I like. Beware those who know a lot about art, but don’t know what they like.
I like poetry that sounds interesting, regardless of message; poetry that has messages, too, though even better if it is clever and sounds good.
What intrigues me about all this discussion is that it can seem stuck in an old-fashioned concept, that of 'page' poetry, ink on paper, poetry that grows on trees.
Sure, I love paper-based poems, but this great poetic revolution that is live poetry, oral poetry, open-mic surgery poetry, doesn't need all this. Condemning a poem because it does not confirm to our ideas of style or form is a kind of reactionary, reductive panic in the face of the clear popularity of live poetry.
Why have a poetry competition that excludes certain types of poem? Well, why not? And why not have poetry competitions that encourage certain styles or types?
This is one of my issues with the world of the competition and poetry magazines: who is the arbiter? Who does the rejecting? The largely-self-appointed editors.
Nothing wrong with slam poetry, or audio poetry either. It is writing and involves a different set of skills and processes, ones that make the writer aware of the effects on her audience. It increases access, enabling people who neither know nor care about some of the stuff written above to share the product of their creativity with others. You don’t even need to spell well or concern yourself with line breaks, except insofar as they affect the sound as ‘performed’. Sacrilege?
What is oft lacking in this world - and these sorts of discussion help reduce that lack - is enough experimentation with new forms or ideas.
The point of this phenomenon that is the live poetry movement, for me, is precisely to bring forward more voices with a range of ideas and preferences, and to encourage us to open our minds to poetry's infinite possibilities.

For Steven...who included the "T" word in his lofty view of things poetical...
"Those who value the worth of a story
Some might perceive as being Tory,
For what is Left they've heard before,
And know what nonsense lies in store."
(When I think of the songs folks love to croon,
One thing's sure - they're WERTHER TUNE!)
Pip-pip!

Not sure why you are denigrating some poetry styles and the people who like those styles, Steven. There is room for all of us. We havn't even touched on traditional styles of other nations. The point Harry made is that, actually, in national and other competitions and many publications there now seems only to be an avenue for the avant guard, non-traditional types of poetry so there is no longer a level playing field.
Ergo we need a different playing field or more than one thereof.
I hope you don't really want to throw the baby out with the bathwater, Steven. I've always been a live and let live kind of person and accept that some people are not happy out of their comfort zone - whether readers /listeners or writers/performers. They are not deprived; they have access to other poetic forms which would, before the explosion of information/communication in our modern world have been totally inaccessible to them. And we have poets like you who are offering them tastes of the New Order.

I agree with Yvonne there is room for all.

Sorry, but in what way are any of the national poetry competitions, avant garde? They're about as avant garde as a wet weekend in Bangor. The ubiquitous style is a kind of empirical loosely iambic kind of personal narrative. It may not be 'traditional' if your sense of tradition extends no further than that Empire apologist Kipling, but it certainly ain't 'avant garde.' There's no more room for the avant garde in the competition culture than there is for last dying vestiges of the Kipling-wallahs. It's the triumph of dullness over adventure, convention over invention and the status quo over any kind of change.

Please let me be the last one to curtail free debate, but is there really anything other than inter-poet sniping left in this discussion.

I hope not, graham. I like kipling (betjeman too, so far as that goes).

What strikes me about a lot of these discussion threads, is how cicular they become.

It was a great subject to start off with - I think Harry was right to question whether there was any serious place for traditional poetry at contemporary competition level.

I think a lot of the arguments for and against, have had some truth in them, if you are looking to understand the other side... Thereafter we descend into entrenched opinion about the value of each type of poetry. There is no right and wrong - only personal preference and personal opinion.

I write rhyming and none rhyming poetry. I'm none too bothered if people don't like either style. It works for me and on the whole, for non poet audiences - so that's good enough for me. As I said before, there is plenty of bad stuff masquerading as good on both sides of the fence...

Just back from my poetry free holiday (Thanks God!)

What an erudite and avant garde -wise knowlegable discussion!

Different styles of poetry are here already and available to be judged on their merits (comments on this site are almost always generous and fair)

But, seriously, the almost complete absence of formally structured poetry from national competitions is bad for all poetry. as -can be argued - the absence of the `really`
avante garde stuff ( if only so that the two kinds can be judged in tandem)

Yvonne would seem to have the most effective solution which would be a national competition expressly for each particular kind, and that this would require someone with the greatest access to Joe public and the media.

Is there some way that we - as a national poetry site - could make our view known to the organisers of such competitions and ask for their reaction to our points?

Reported elsewhere by me on WOL is a
final comment in a popular newspaper
review of the new Carol Ann Duffy
collection of "Jubilee Lines" poems.
I quote:
"My personal gripe is that there is
simply not enough of the rhyming stuff here. As the late great Adrian Mitchell memorably said: 'Most people ignore most poetry because most poetry ignores
most people'"
Put this is the wider context of
competitions and performances and it
makes the point with added relevance.