I don't know exactly how to approach this post without sounding rather arrogant, so I'll just come out and say it - there is a lot of really bad public poetry about at the moment. Now I think that, as poets go, I'm OK - not great but OK. I have a bit of an idea of how it's done but I think it's for others to judge how well I do it. Nevertheless when writing poetry it helps to have some ideas of stress, rhythm and rhyme. A knowledge of what words like anapest, iamb and spondee mean, may not be essential but if you want to be good at the craft it can't hurt.
What, though, do I mean by public poetry. Well, there is, for example, a trend at the moment (in the UK at least) for television advertising to be done in verse. I don't especially want to name and shame but there is one for an airline, another for a local transport company and another for an insurance company all running at the moment. There are others but those three stand out for me as being shining examples of bad poetry. The "poems" in question could be used as text book examples of how not to do it. Words are misstressed, lines have near rhymes, homophonic rhymes and just mispronounced rhymes. Verses show only the loosest idea anything resembling rhythm and metre. If these were intentional style choices, fair enough, but there is no evidence of that. It seems that some advertising agencies have just decided that any old bit of poorly written doggerel will do and given the copy to the first person in the office to pick up a biro. The result is some embarrassingly bad poetry.
I used to think that some of the poems people wrote to my local newspaper were pretty poor but I changed my mind about that. The people writing them were, I decided, sincere - if not very accomplished - in their desire to produce something good. There is no special disgrace in trying to do something even if the attempt is not completely succesful. On the other hand these adverts, and other expressions of public poetry, are meant to be seen by mass audiences. They are meant to be, in the case of the adverts, selling something and I think the least they could do would be to get someone who has some idea of what he's doing to look it over before putting it out in the wide world.
What, though, do I mean by public poetry. Well, there is, for example, a trend at the moment (in the UK at least) for television advertising to be done in verse. I don't especially want to name and shame but there is one for an airline, another for a local transport company and another for an insurance company all running at the moment. There are others but those three stand out for me as being shining examples of bad poetry. The "poems" in question could be used as text book examples of how not to do it. Words are misstressed, lines have near rhymes, homophonic rhymes and just mispronounced rhymes. Verses show only the loosest idea anything resembling rhythm and metre. If these were intentional style choices, fair enough, but there is no evidence of that. It seems that some advertising agencies have just decided that any old bit of poorly written doggerel will do and given the copy to the first person in the office to pick up a biro. The result is some embarrassingly bad poetry.
I used to think that some of the poems people wrote to my local newspaper were pretty poor but I changed my mind about that. The people writing them were, I decided, sincere - if not very accomplished - in their desire to produce something good. There is no special disgrace in trying to do something even if the attempt is not completely succesful. On the other hand these adverts, and other expressions of public poetry, are meant to be seen by mass audiences. They are meant to be, in the case of the adverts, selling something and I think the least they could do would be to get someone who has some idea of what he's doing to look it over before putting it out in the wide world.
No comments:
Post a Comment