John, it seems to me that you're confusing your own difficult past
experiences with today's unsatisfactory situation regarding Slam and
performance poetry. Unsatisfactory as far as I'm concerned, of course. Those
who enjoy it and make a good living from it are no doubt perfectly happy
with its limitations, and indeed I enjoy live poetry myself. But I can't
really see how you can argue your opinion of such things when, by your own
admission, you've never been to a Slam and so can have no real idea what I'm
talking about.
I'm also a little surprised by Mairead's comedy & poetry thumbs-up. I think
perhaps those reading my message took my description of poetry as 'serious'
in its literal meaning, whereas in fact I meant 'good', as Tim (I think)
tried to explain. It's hard to find the right description, as good poetry
means something different to everyone. But I certainly didn't mean that I
was excluding humour from poetry. I just wish there wasn't so much bad
poetry about, by which I mean poetry which doesn't conform to my own
personal definitions of what poetry is, i.e. aware of itself as poetry,
musical in some way, thought-provoking in some way, meaning more as it
stands than it could ever mean if rephrased in prose. Almost no Slam poetry
and far too little performance poetry could be judged as poetry under those
requirements.
Hence my lament over the proliferation of performance poetry nights which
slide quickly into stand-up after their initially noble intention to
introduce large numbers of people to poetry. Large numbers of people will
never be interested in poetry per se, because it's simply too hard and
demanding, too cerebral. Popular and comic versions will always be
preferable to most people.
But that doesn't mean we shouldn't continue to fight poetry's corner. Which
was my original message. Slam is fun, but it's not poetry and pretending
otherwise does nobody any favours, particularly not poets. As for saying we
shouldn't encourage young people to take poetry seriously, I can't even
begin to imagine how we should encourage them to take it otherwise.
Jane
www.janeholland.co.uk
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