In a rather busy month, I thought I’d share some rambling thoughts
on poetry.
I’m judging a school poetry competition at the moment which has
turned out to be a Herculean task due to the sheer brilliance and diversity of the
entries, and it’s made me reflect on poetry and how I react to it - and how it helps
me to find a moment of calm and insight.
 |
| I still know many of these by heart |
I’m a life-long learner and every Wednesday morning I spend a
couple of hours with like-minded folk looking at art, literature, film and
social history. In recent months, we’ve studied and enjoyed the poetry of
Byron, Keats, Shelley, Yeats, Hardy, Heaney, Ginsberg, William Carlos Williams,
Rossetti, Blake, Carol Ann Duffy and – too many to mention – and thought about poems
within their social context.
What will we make of today’s poetry looking back? According
to The Guardian the other week, sales
of poetry were at their highest ever level last year. The rise of poetry is one
of the unintended consequences of all the current uncertainties in life, the
upheaval of Brexit, the cheapening of language and the blurring of truth and
lies. As language gets abbreviated into text speak, as words are tossed
casually around, there’s something powerful in falling back on the English
language and revelling in the rhythms. As we grapple to find some sense in what
the heck’s going on in the world, well-chosen lines of poetry can fill that
gap.
We can share poetry now so easily on social media, in
competitions, poetry slams, open mic nights, YouTube, Instagram. Poets who
struggled to reach an audience before can now have millions of followers.
Advertisers have long recognised that poems have the power to
move us and give us that elusive feeling.
Who’d have thought a poem could be used effectively to sell something as dry as
financial services, a savings account or a mortgage? But the Nationwide Building
Society campaign didn’t focus on the endless form filling or being put on hold.
Instead, they used poets speaking direct to camera, making us feel about family and milestones in our
lives. Centreparcs adverts have used the William Henry Davies hundred-year-old Leisure poem (What is this life, if full of care etc...) and recently the modern musings
of a Dad, Mum and teenager ‘This is Family’ campaign which I can’t help but find
moving, despite myself.
At the Sassie retreat in December, June Crebbin ran a poetry workshop
and it was startling how many of us poured deep-held feelings into such short
pieces. June herself wrote a poem in another session which struck an emotional
chord with many. It was circulated afterwards to those of us – myself included –
who cheerily said we’d like it at our funerals! I marvel at how the arrangement
of so few lines – ten beautifully crafted ones in June’s case – generates such
a reaction.
So, as I deliberate between the poems on remembering and
forgetting scattered across my desk, I have June’s poem pinned up too, as a reminder
of the power of words to move us, to give us time out and a much-needed breath
in a hectic and confusing world.
Tracy Darnton is the author of The Truth About Lies, currently shortlisted for the Waterstones
Children’s Book Prize 2019.
You can follow Tracy on Twitter @TracyDarnton
1 comment:
I'd love to read June's poem. Would June be happy for you to post it?
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