Are poets supposed to do something, to make a difference? Watching Singer/Songwriters on the BBC just now made me look at Roy Harper’s website. I first inhaled his work with the smoke from my housemate’s joss sticks when at teacher-training college in 1972, and was struck by one verse of Harper’s  more than any other: “Oh, I hate the white man/and his evergreen excuse/Oh I hate the white man/ and the man who turned him loose.”

Wow, eh? If I could write like that… well, I’d be Roy Harper. And I’m not. Clearly.

Anyhow, I have just read this on Royo’s website:

“The poet Shelley famously wrote that 'the poet is the unacknowledged legislator of the world'. This was not intended by him as an airy-fairy bedsit aspiration that a moral force was somehow generated through the mere act of writing: but that there was an essential link between poetry, political philosophy, and the active confrontation of illegitimate authority.”

They reckon that there is a vacuum at the centre of politics (not one that could clean it up unfortunately) and yet I am not convinced that there is any good political poetry about it, perhaps because it is difficult to write good political poetry – to make serious, topical points and still be poetic?

Now Thursday night’s Commonword slam final was pretty darned good, but there were a couple of rants which were clearly written to appeal to the listeners’ political prejudices. All well-intentioned stuff, but demonstrating that, for me, the content is not the poem; the poem is the poem. It’s not what you say, it’s… 

I think I shall suggest this in the discussions pages, see what you gels/guys think about Harper’s/Shelley’s thoughts.

I met up with Anwen Lewis at the slam – sexiest cellist/poet on the Manchester circuit, though doing less since having her second child – and reminded her that she had been one of our committee members in the early days of Write Out Loud.

I had a pint with Tony Walsh afterwards, Glastonbury poet-in-residence, and another ex-Write Out Loud committee member. He is involved in so much now: teaching poetry in schools and prisons, receiving commissions all over the place, from Poland to Preston, yet he still remembers his roots – not always a good thing for us sub-working class types, our bloody roots still wrapped wound our legs.

Tony reckons that we have made a big difference to lots of peoples’ lives, Write Out loud and all the other organisations involved in open-mic or performance poetry.

Is poetry our way out? Our unacknowledged legislator? I’d love to hear what you think in our discussion.

Photograph: Greg Freeman