This essay is part of a display at Poulton le Fylde Library to celebrate National Poetry Month.
Do you like Poetry? The answer, Poetry is Rubbish may be
a bit of an overstatement but for most people, Poetry is something of a Black
Art. Rather like Marmite you love it or hate it. For most of us, our first
experience of poetry will be nursery rhymes although we will not realise this
at the time. Our next experience will probably be at school when in English we
have to learn a poem and recite it from memory. That will be a turn-off because
we don’t like learning things in parrot fashion. And we certainly don’t like
standing up in front of our mates to make a fool of ourselves.
These early experiences colour our view of poetry as
something a bit like art, it’s for posh people really. You don’t like poetry
because you don’t understand it, right? If there is nothing in it for you, why
should I try to understand it? If you are going to enjoy something you don’t
expect to have to try and understand it. After all you can listen to a song and
enjoy it without having to understand how it was made! And that is a poem put
to music. But most of us will come across a poem at some time in our lives that catches
our imagination or means something to us. for me, it was In Flanders Field by John McCrea which is one of the first poems
that really made me stop and think.
In
Flanders Fields
In Flanders fields the
poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the Dead. Short days
ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.
Take
up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.
John McCrea 2nd
May 1915
Copyright – Public Domain
The inspiration for “In Flanders Fields” came during the
early days of the First World War at the Second Battle of Ypres when a young
Canadian artillery officer, Lieutenant Alexis Helmer, was killed on 2nd May
1915, in the gun positions near Ypres by an exploding German artillery shell. The
Canadian military doctor and artillery commander Major John McCrae was asked to
conduct the burial service. It is believed that later that evening, after the
burial, John began the draft for his now-famous poem “In Flanders Fields”.
I defy anyone to read the words of that poem and not be
moved. But just like other art forms painting or drawing there are different
styles many of which are very personal, and many do not appeal to a wide
audience. But that is no reason to dismiss poetry as something you don’t or
can’t understand or something that is too complicated, something many of us are
all guilty of, I suspect.
I do not really understand poetry, just like I don’t
really get modern jazz! For that reason, I ignored it as an art form for most
of my life, until I discovered a book of poetry called, Verse and Worse by Arnold Silcock, sadly rather late in life. It is
a collection of light-hearted poetry amongst which are the few poems that
really stuck in my mind, and a few that I have committed to memory, mainly, I
suspect because the words in them are rather rude!
My girlfriend, now my wife, sent me poems when I was laid
up in bed for 10 weeks with Jaundice, just before we married. They were really
sweet and meant so much to me but for the life of me, I could not write one
back, no matter how hard I tried. But eventually many years later, when I was
60 to be precise, poetry writing came to me from nowhere. I was driving along
in the car thinking about the place I used to go on holiday as a kid, the sort
of thing you do as you get older, it is called nostalgia. A poem started to
form in my head. I could hear the words; they were describing the walk we used
to take to the shore, from my grandfather's Farm on the side of the hill. I
could not wait to get out of the car to write the words down. I went for a
coffee and scribbled in my notebook; before I knew it, I had written my first
poem.
There are a number of lessons to learn from this
experience, firstly, you never know when the poetry bug will bite, If I can
write a poem anyone can and there are no rules, well there are but you
shouldn’t let not knowing them put you off. I have purposely avoided learning
the rules of poetry, much like I have avoided the rules of painting because I
don’t want them to get in the way at the moment or to put me off.
My First Poem - A Walk
to the Shore
by Alistair J Parker
|
Crunch on the pebbles
Step over the stones
Cross the neat grass
Lift the latch
Hear the squeak
Rattle the chain
Back on the hook
Make sure it’s closed
Mind the cow pat
Steaming and brown
Follow the dyke
The dry stone wall
A wiggly path
Winds down the hill
This way and that
It heads for the sea
Spot the odd rabbit
There used to be more
Little brown berries
In piles everywhere
Left by the bunnies
Look there’s a burrow
Home for a rabbit
Home in the ground
Hear the sweet singing
What did it say
Bread with no cheese,
it repeats all the day
Yellow and noisy,
it hammers a song
One step more,
keep going along
Taste the blackberries
All warm lush and round
Sun always shining
It shines every day
Over the stile now
Best time of the day
The smell of the hay
|
We’re nearly there
There is the sea
See the sand, close now
The smell of the sea
Through the rough grass
Mind the gorse spikes
Sloes in abundance
Lovely with gin
Clack through the pebbles
All tumbling down
Look for the white ones
Look that’s one there
Feel the sand crunchy
On feet that are bare
Look its Man Friday
A footprint is there
Hear the waves crashing
Up onto the rocks
Skim the stones seaward
Bounce off the waves
Hear the shrill call
The birds of the sea
A Sea Pie is calling
Plaintive and haunting
Memories flow
This magical place
I once loved to go
I feel a tear forming
It rolls down the cheek
The memory is dear
Seems such a long time
Since I have walked there
|
If I can write a poem anyone can. Get your pen out and have a go. What you need to get going is permission; you need to give yourself permission and maybe a few hints
on where to start if you really have no idea how to get started. My first tip
would be to do as I did and visualise something you are very familiar with as a
progression, such as a walk or an activity, e.g. getting up in the morning, or going to work. Then write down a list of keywords that arise from the journey,
and you have the makings of a poem…
Wake
up,
open
eyes,
yawn,
cough,
yawn
again,
pull
back the duvet,
sit
up,
swing
your legs out,
take
a first step,
open
the curtain
and
yawn.
Now add a few words and
slightly rearrange.
I
wake up,
Open
my eyes,
Yawn,
cough,
And
yawn again,
Pull
back the duvet,
Sit
up and stretch,
Swing
out my legs,
Take
a first step,
Open
the curtain
And
yawn.
You see what I mean; now you have a poem, “Waking Up” you’re
a poet in no time…
Remember, there are rules, but there are no rules, the
rules are there to be broken and remember mistakes are the source of inspiration
and exciting discoveries. Get writing…
Since the fateful day when
I was compelled to write my first poem, I
have continued to write and have two self-published books of poems. I also have
this Blog which I update regularly.
If you really want to learn
more about the rules of Poetry, you could do worse than read Stephen Fry’s book
– The Ode Less Travelled – Unlocking
The Poetry Within - as a starter.
