Cross words

Yesterday evening I watched a South Bank Show programme about the Barnsley poet, Ian McMillan and you'll like as not think I'm weird, but it really made me cross.  McMillan was shown in a variety of situations where he was being paid, as a poet, to help develop speech and literacy skills. 

 

A prime example of his style was seen in his work with a group of immigrants learning English.  He asked them to say where they'd come from and he wrote their answers on a blackboard thus:

Pakistan

Slovakia

Afghanistan

Germany

 

then he paused and said, "these are great words, but to get a rhythm we need to use 'and', then we have:

Pakistan

Slovakia

Afghanistan and

Germany

 

There, it now has great words and rhythm,  Good work!"

 

Quite how this helped people who need functional language to better their chances in this country goodness only knows altho I daresay they found a few more words to describe the waste of their time once he'd left the building. 

 

He then was shown in a primary school where he said his aim was to 'loosen up' the children's language. 

Now I always thought that children were famed for having a distinctively 'loose' way with language.  So much so in fact that they frequently either make their own words up or use words to mean the exact opposite of their dictionary definition. 

Nevertheless, these children called out various commonplace words which McMillan received with cries of fantastic!' and 'brilliant!', as he listed them and then asked for conjunctives.  Having stuck several 'and's and 'but's into the list he told the children that this demonstrated that anyone can be creative and anyone can write poetry.

 

Well, I have news

for the Barnsley rhymster,

prose cut up

into brief phrases or

single

words

is not poetry.  Even tho

to the unthinking

eye

it may appear

similar and is often

touted as

such by those

who should, and often do,

know better.

 

Poetry requires precise language specifically selected to convey the content in a closely focused and economical way which presents recognisable truths or insights which strike home at both the heart and the intellect.  Form and structure, metre and rhythm are essential not only to the writing of good poetry but to the reading of it too. 

 

Form and

Structure and

Metre and

Rhythm

And CONTENT!

 

I loathe and abhor the way so-called poets and teachers of literacy skills like McMillan patronise people by presenting them with banal rubbish and demean their intelligence by crying 'fantastic', 'brilliant' and 'great!!' when they suggest commonplace words like 'and'.

 

Barnsley poet?  The man is a cheap shyster; an intellectual pygmy populist of the type which is set to ruin English language poetry. 

 

I'd shoot

the fraudulent

bugger myself

given half

a chance.