Poetry, as Lewis Carroll might have said,
is a curious thing.
It is written by few, published
by ever fewer, and read by precious few.
Yet, when a leader needs to make an
important speech, on some occasion of great civic importance, they will
invariably reach for quotes from poems. Or their speechwriters will.
Poetry has its abiding power, even in an
age when almost no-one reads it.
Why? We don’t know. The reason is partly
because we don’t know what poetry is. It defies definition, science. It
has even survived centuries of academic inquiry, almost intact.
The poet Robert Graves gave us some insight, by stating that “poetry is inspiration, tempered by common sense”.
He also touched upon the advice that
parents invariably give would-be poet children, that they should get into real estate
instead, by remarking: “It’s true that there’s no money in poetry. But then,
there’s no poetry in money.”
Despite the fact that poetry has become
definitively what marketeers call “niche”, it refuses to die out. It has flourishes – new readings spring up, there are slams and festivals…
and the literary page of the paper might fasten onto it with an occasional “poetry revival”
yarn, but in the end we all know the truth: Poetry is for
devotees, dilettantes, and nuts.
As the late Carol Novack put it: “No-one cares about poets, except other poets, and their mothers god
bless them.”
All of which makes the arrival of any new
collection of poetry something to celebrate.
It’s like the arrival of a bonnie baby in a retirement village.
The writing, the editing, the publishing of
poetry, are all profound acts of faith in a world of cynicism, of anomie, of
blah, of meh.
That those acts take place on a regular basis, and new poetry books do appear, is nothing short of curious - and indeed, miraculous.
Remarks made launching Glass Bicycles, poems by Brendan Doyle,
Carrington Hotel Katoomba, 6 October 2012.
No comments:
Post a Comment