why poetry sucks
You can try to deny it, but next to music and movies poetry's a freaky little backwater. Most poetry's bad or just downright drab identikit stuff - technically competent and well written, but pointless. Maybe my stuff's bad but I'd like to think I'm at least trying to find something new.
Here's a fun and simple game - take three or four random poetry books (buy or steal, I don't care) by well known names, pull out the pages and cut off anything identifying the author, now shuffle the pages and try to figure out which book they came from. It can't be done. There are almost no individuals left in poetry, and only two or three with anything to say.
When leading poets like Simon Armitage, Owen Sheers, Carol Ann Duffy etc are so fucking dull it's no wonder Barbara Taylor Bradford and other no-talents clutter up the shelves of our bookstores. Let's face it, the game's up.
So whom would I recommend? Well keeping it to people I've met I'd say Sacha Karaulov and Lloyd Robson . Beyond that, among the living I'd say Pascale Petit, Tony Harrison, Adrian Mitchell, Christopher Logue, and that's probably all - if I think of (or come across) any others I'll let you know. As you can probably tell I prefer my work to be visceral, either politically, morally or emotionally engaged - or all of them at once. Hence my preference for music as a form.
Here's a fun and simple game - take three or four random poetry books (buy or steal, I don't care) by well known names, pull out the pages and cut off anything identifying the author, now shuffle the pages and try to figure out which book they came from. It can't be done. There are almost no individuals left in poetry, and only two or three with anything to say.
When leading poets like Simon Armitage, Owen Sheers, Carol Ann Duffy etc are so fucking dull it's no wonder Barbara Taylor Bradford and other no-talents clutter up the shelves of our bookstores. Let's face it, the game's up.
So whom would I recommend? Well keeping it to people I've met I'd say Sacha Karaulov and Lloyd Robson . Beyond that, among the living I'd say Pascale Petit, Tony Harrison, Adrian Mitchell, Christopher Logue, and that's probably all - if I think of (or come across) any others I'll let you know. As you can probably tell I prefer my work to be visceral, either politically, morally or emotionally engaged - or all of them at once. Hence my preference for music as a form.
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