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Is Poetry Weird?

Pity poor Pat Schofield. By all accounts, an unremarkable mind, she has become immortalised by the satiric pen of the major British poet, Carol Ann Duffy. At first, I sided with Duffy in this, as a poet myself, who knows poems need snow and gunshots (to paraphrase Truffaut) - and Schofield is an epically-proportioned dunce, for trying to ban Duffy's poem because it deals with a violent subject matter (murder by knife); especially ironic, this, in the country of Romeo and Juliet, and Hercule Poirot. However, has Duffy not killed a flea with an A-bomb? By titling the poem with a real person's name, has she not been, ultimately, a tad too cruel? Even Yeats and Swift, in their satiric swoon, often titled their invectives less directly. This poem could practically be mailed in the post.

I fear, this streak of brilliant malice may cost Duffy the position of laureate - we can't really have the Queen's rep naming and shaming dumb citizens at will, can we? Imagine if every poet titled poems about real people who annoy them, everytime they do? We'd all be wading in lawsuits, or eponymous verse. I had hoped a more imaginative solution could have been opted for - a character invented, to symbolise all the idiots in the world who don't like poetry - at last count, over 5 billion, and 99.99 % of humanity. Instead, poor Schofield gets the lion's share of the blame, for a genetic/ social fact that science or religion cannot obscure: almost everyone except poets now thinks "poetry is weird". And, hold on a minute - isn't it? Would poets really love it so much, if it was not weird? Weird, in the wider sense, pertaining to futurity's power, and magic, and so on, as well as linguistic strangeness. It boils down to this: only a poet would write a poem to try to undo the damage an ordinary person caused by admitting they don't get poetry's charisma. It's like sending roses to someone with hayfever.

Duffy has just made a poetry-hating dolt famous for all time in the English canon. How's that for a dish served cold? Maybe not. But, has any poet yet figured out how to build a better verse-trap? No. Try as poets might, if they go too experimental, they're accused of being obscure; and if they go all Armitage-loves-Oasis on us, they can't compete with the real celebs like Damien Hirst and Beckam, let alone Hollywooders. Follow the money: we're in a world where poetry is less valued than day-old day passes. Let's start satirising almost every human on the planet, and make them love us, fast!

Comments

Janet Vickers said…
I think your response is wise and mature - however I must confess I loved Duffy's response and feel a sense of hope that part of the world is OK still.
Mark Granier said…
"However, has Duffy not killed a flea with an A-bomb? By titling the poem with a real person's name, has she not been, ultimately, a tad too cruel?....

Imagine if every poet titled poems about real people who annoy them, everytime they do? We'd all be wading in lawsuits, or eponymous verse."

I'll repeat what I said on Jane's POF forum to someone who made the same point (because I think it bears repeating).

I do have some sympathy for Pat Schofield. Teachers/examiners are only human after all, prey to all the petty prejudices and tunnel visions that afflict the majority of us, and apt to get out the wrong side of the bed from time to time.

But I don't buy this idea of Schofield as a flea-sized victim, the unassuming woman-in-the-street. Because if she really wanted to just get by, to mind her own business and leave the big bad poets to theirs... why make a fuss in the first place? Because she was a concerned citizen? Then why not be concerned enough to fully examine her own motives? Why did she not think twice (at the very least) before raising a stink about a poem she admittedly found "a bit weird"? Translate this as "I didn't understand it." But the poem isn't that difficult, is it? If she didn't understand such patent irony what on earth made her think herself qualified to hold her position in the first place? Why couldn't she have asked herself if she might have understood the poem better (or if the average 14 year old student might understand it better)?

She MAY have asked herself these questions of course, but I suspect not (or not with any genuine conviction anyway). She assumed the voice of an outraged Moral Majority without having thought where it might lead, right back to her door. Hence my sympathy has limits for an external examiner in need of some serious internal (self-) examination.

A pity she didn't just bitch about the poem in some forum, where someone might have put her straight. On the plus side, Duffy got a good sonnet out of it and, more importantly, the replacement poem, Stealing, is a better one in my opinion.
poesiefilmchen said…
On the 9th October the curtain will rise again: for the fourth time, the Literaturwerkstatt Berlin will be opening the ZEBRA Poetry Film Festival, the international film festival for poetry. Over four days, poetry films from all over the world will be shown – and on the 12th October prizes will be awarded for the best of the over 900 entries for the competition. The ZEBRA Poetry Film Festival is the biggest forum world-wide for a new and exciting genre positioned between poetry, film and new media.
Further Information: www.zebra-award.org

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