Advice to a modern poet

Oh how I do agree!!!

Just back from poetry group - we have such a good time. Kindly and constructive criticism of each other's efforts, introducing each other to new poets and poems, tea and cake - perfect!

I think they read it in that flat toned voice because they want to leave the interpretation to us. But yes, I'm not sure about it.

phoenix. Are you by any chance Linda Snell?

No jingl but I do hope that Scruff comes home safe and sound.

Mishap in some ways I envy you your poetry group, but in others I realise that I'm too shy/ashamed to release my writing to the bigger world.

Sorry, to add I know that I have put stuff on here, but not sure that I could read aloud any of my scribblings to others.

You sound as if you are referring to a certain well -known poet who has reached the top as far as national recognition goes Phoenix. I am in awe of her poetic skills and usage of the English language and I'm sure she is a really nice person but her delivery is (to my ear) dire. She has audio recordings of most of her work, but I must confess I prefer to read them with my voice going on in my head. Her work on the death of Harry Patch - The Last Soldier, I think it was - moved me to tears but I preferred to read it,and of course, dwell on the words. When she read it it became a dirge. That's just my opinion ... there will be plenty of fans who disagree... but then that's the whole point of art.

It makes me want to go to sleep. Maybe you get used to it in time? If you listen to enough modern poets. I went to listen to Andrew Motion a couple of years ago and he certainly used masses of passion, but then, he isn't the most modern of modern poets.

*Phoenix" - we have all got to know and trust each other, so we are happy to expose our poetic weaknesses and share ideas.

Someone once tried to start something similar on here but it was scuppered by one or two people taking the p***, as I recall, and it went nowhere. Bit of a shame that.

I love poetry but (call me ignorant) I can't get away with the non-rhyming stuff which to me reads like any old paragraph.

All together now......................... ignorant !

Not ignorant - some of it is c***.

But a lot of unrhyming poems have patterns, rhythms and near-rhymes (which can be clever/witty/moving).

Yes I can appreciate some near rhyming poems and some clever patterns of ramblings, Mishap but really don't enjoy those boring old lines of sentences that some people refer to as poetry.

I think a lot of what some people refer to as poems are nothing more than lines of dialogue.

Or even a kind of speech. Sorry I'll shut up and go away.

I just watched this on youtube (quite uplifting story of a homeless man who was lost and is found) and one of the lines in his poems really struck a chord today "Damned is the man who abandons himself" - it can mean so many things, but right now I have a severely mentally ill relative who has, through illness, 'abandoned' normality and honestly he is like a man damned to live in an alternative reality.

I seem to remember Richard Burton delivered Under Milkwood in this nigh on monotone.

I can't write rhyming poetry. I can only write something if I really feel it at the time. I call it prose. But it rarely even scans well.

Still, it's a way of getting feelings out.

Is he happy though granny-a?

This is the Richard III poem. Thanks for posting it elsewhere Phoenix

My bones, scripted in light, upon cold soil,
a human braille. My skull, scarred by a crown,
emptied of history. Describe my soul
as incense, votive, vanishing; you own
the same. Grant me the carving of my name.

These relics, bless. Imagine you re-tie
a broken string and on it thread a cross,
the symbol severed from me when I died.
The end of time – an unknown, unfelt loss –
unless the Resurrection of the Dead …

or I once dreamed of this, your future breath
in prayer for me, lost long, forever found;
or sensed you from the backstage of my death,
as kings glimpse shadows on a battleground.

It was a lovely poem though and even better that Carol Ann Duffy did not read it herself.

I fully agree with absentgrandma and phoenix about Carol Ann Duffys delivery being dire, dirge like is the word. I have heard her several times.

I have to say that IMO she is one of those writers who should not try to read their own poetry at all. She cannot seem to make it sound as good as it probably is.
She is by no means the only writer or poet who cannot make a good job of reading their own work.

jingle re Richard Burton in Under Milk Wood IMO he was a darn site better than Dylan Thomas doing it.

Yes, Dylan Thomas had terrible delivery....a sort of a sing-song voice which I expect was unintelligible after he'd had a few.

Now John Betjamen had a frightfully 'pow-sh' accent but I loved to hear him read his work especially 'Christmas' : 'The bells of waiting Advent ring, the tortoise stove is lit again....' He was no great actor, in fact his voice was quite sonorous but it had a certain charm which fitted his prose.

Not many poets are the best readers of their own work - TS Eliot's delivery was almost incomprehensible - but these days they have to perform as well as write to get themselves in the public eye and to sell their stuff, never mind hawk their wares round the literary festival and events circuit. I suppose we wouldn't expect a playwright to necessarily be a good actor.

Nellie, it wasn't me that posted it, it was jingl

Vegasmags, I agree, There are poets and there are performance poets and there is a difference. I once heard a recording of "The Charge of the Light Brigade" read by Tennyson. He managed to ruin a brilliant poem even though it was his own work!

I think poets read their own poems in a neutral tone because they don't want to suggest, with nuances or emotions, anything that isn't already there in the completed poem. They just want us to hear the poem and make of it what we will individually. Perhaps it would be like over decorating the frame of a finished painting.

Could it be that the poet is holding on to her emotions because the work holds so much meaning for her that she needs to keep them in check? Performing often requires a person to distance themselves from the work.