I'm not so worried about the Andy Griffiths thing - Dr Seuss was one
of my earliest influences, after all, and at primary age I think what
matters most is that kids learn to enjoy language and make a
connection between reading and pleasure. So what if they thinks
toilets and farts are funny? No matter what you do, 10 year old boys
will always find toilets funny... All my children went through a phase
of obsessively (and only) reading Garfield, which are surely the most
banal comics of all time, and we still have piles of the ghastly
things; but I steadily followed a policy of allowing them to follow
their bliss (while supplying, of course, access to lots more
interesting stuff, should they choose to look at it) and eventually
they graduated happily from that to Bulgakov and Burroughs. So there
you are.

I think it's the teens that get done over. A few years ago, my
daughter brought home some poetry they were supposed to study in Year
11, which I found deeply depressing. Zoe herself regarded this stuff
with massive contempt. They were supposed - I think - to be
accessible, stuff that teens could relate to, perhaps the kind of
things counsellors might find "relevant"... And it was a load of
patronising tosh...terrible poems, by poets I had never heard of. It's
much better to hit teens with passionate, complex stuff, because even
if they don't understand it. those who respond won't forget it.  And
of course there are always going to be people who are just not
interested in poetry, no matter what acrobatics one performs,
including, sadly, many teachers.

The most sensible English teacher I ever met on a school visit - a New
York visual artist with bleached dreadlocks who taught at a Catholic
school in Alice Springs - simply told her Year 11/12 class that if
they weren't interested, they could go to sleep on their desk; they
just shouldn't interrupt the class. In fact, not one student did that;
but they all knew they had the option to opt out if they wanted to,
and that made a difference. What followed was one of the more
exhilarating class visits I've had, with lots of lively discussion
about poetry, and fingerpointing at the teacher when I said that poems
were not about paraphrasing into "meaning" ("yeah, yeah, yeah, but
class, you all have to pass your EXAMS") - But teachers like that are
rare.

Reading this discussion with interest. The slam scene here is
absolutely dismal, although I do think the worst thing I've ever seen
was a "stand up poet" in Britain, which opened up a new circle of
Hell. "Spoken word" poetry here is on the whole about as banal as it
gets; I'd like to think there were exceptions, surely there must be
some, but I can't recall any at the moment. We have our own version of
Poems on the Underground, but instead of a sudden flash of Celan you
get these things called rookus, supposedly a form of haiku, which do
bad things to my brain when I see them. Some examples here for the
curious - http://movinggalleries.org/rooku/ Aaargh!

xA


On Mon, Jan 19, 2009 at 11:24 PM, Peter Hughes
<[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Dear Tim, Rupert, Till, Ian & everyone...
>
>
>
> Best wishes for 2009.
>
> I worked in primary schools for 15 years and was startled by how much
> rubbish gets shipped into classrooms and halls in the name of 'children's
> poetry'. I don't mean poetry written by children – I mean poetry written by
> adults for children. One 'children's poet' who tried to arrange a paid
> reading at the school managed to get the word 'toilet' or 'fart' onto every
> page of the sample material he sent. So stunted (and institutionalised)
> notions of poetry can start early. Vacant rhyming couplets or quatrains,
> full of sick and poo. Maybe this leads quite smoothly into certain kinds of
> performance poetry where the aim is to amuse – jaunty, titillating, beery.
> But not much else.
>
>
>
> I get some of that stuff sent to me as submissions for Oystercatcher Press.
>
> But there's another phenomenon which doesn't seem to me to be much of an
> improvement. It's when a bunch of pages arrives with a sprinkling of random
> words. Words unconnected by syntax, rhythm, sense or music by some pale and
> autistic soul. I am Sir Oracle,/ And, when I ope my lips, let no dog bark!
>
> This is the opposite extreme. Instead of pandering to the imagined desires
> of an audience, it demonstrates no awareness that an kind of act of reading
> may ensue. It's almost a challenge: you will not read me. I do not deign to
> participate in an act of communication.
>
>
>
> Somewhere between these two extremes is poetry which respects, challenges
> and includes the reader.
>
>
> Luv,
>
> Peter
>
>
> ________________________________
>
> Date: Mon, 19 Jan 2009 11:08:58 +0000
> From: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: Apples & Snakes Performance
>
> To: [log in to unmask]
>
>
> On 18 Jan 2009, at 22:34, rupert mallin wrote:
>
> I agree with very much you've said Tim (I must stop agreeing with you!)
>
> Bloody hell Rupert, what's going on? And I agree with you again. This is
> good. Have I found a new friend? Yes yes yes to what you say.
> Ha, you say, "I shudder when I hear 'Poetry Slam.' Goodness, I was part of
> (John) Paul O'Neill's original UK 'Poetry Slams' in Hackney in 1993. He
> still runs them at the Shaw Theatre, Euston..."
> Umm yes, I too - now I know you won't believe this - performed with O'Neill
> in poetry events in Austin back in '96, as part of, my god, the London Slam
> Team - I was there under false pretenses, had slipped in under their noses
> so they couldn't get rid of me - strange strange. American slams were
> different though - far less stylized and predictable than the Brit version,
> at least the ones I witnessed.
> The rugby club thing with the 'get your tits out' type of approach - that's
> my experience too, the way the worst of the slam atmosphere infected
> non-competitive readings. Of course the sensible thing for anyone with any
> sense is to stay out of it, decline the temptation to read, but a sense of
> adventure and a few drinks and a tolerant why-not attitude still overcomes
> pride and prudence and you find yourself as a part of the awful things, a
> victim of 'em. On rare occasions I have seen good poets hold their own in
> such atmospheres, but with great effort and no return.
> Cheers
> Tim A.
> =
> ________________________________
> Are you a PC?  Upload your PC story and show the world Click Here!



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