Poetry can speak to us, or for us, when our own words fail. And yet, today’s poems seem too often to speak over our shoulders to some bespectacled academic or other standing behind us. Why?
I was asked to write a healing poem for women who had suffered abuse (See end of article), and this piece was the result.
On Popular Poetry by Kerry Cue
Review, The Weekend Australian, 27th Dec 2008
Poets of Australia, you are letting us, the general public, down. You can, of course, write whatever you bloody well choose to write in your poems with or without full stops, capital letters or verbs. You can take your inspiration from Keats, kestrels and cathedrals or expose your post-modernist angst with some poetic self-flagellation. No problem. I’m not here to tell you what to write. I am here to tell you what we, the general public, need with regards to poetry. You must have noticed. We actually do need poetry in our lives.
We read poetry at the great ceremonial moments in life such as weddings or funerals. The sad truth, however, is that most of the poets we choose to read out loud at social gatherings are dead. Khalil Gibran kicked the bucket, metaphorically speaking, over 75 years ago, while the Sufi poet Rumi has been dead for centuries. Moreover, when couples choose poetry for their weddings, they often turn their backs on contemporary poets and call on the likes of an Apache Poem written, possibly, by a nameless Hollywood scriptwriter for a B-grade Western. What’s going on?
Some of you would insist that poetry is not a service industry. Too true. Yet despite the sweat and labour you put into your word-smithing, few want to read what you write*. You are producing a one-legged table. There are those who would appreciate the magnificence of your craftsmanship, but few know what to do with it. As a consequence, publishers have lost interest in printing poetry – You try and sell a one-legged table- and those few newspapers and magazines that publish poetry stow it in small spaces in tight corners.
Full article here.
*I started 2 blogs, Poempig and Mathspig, the same year, 2012. Mathspig has 1.7M hits. Poempig’s hit count was so dismal, I stopped posting in 2015.
See link or following post: 6 dead poets & 2 undead ones:
kerrycue 