Is Poetry Rubbish?

 

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 2^nd 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.