It’s International Poetry Day
And thus I just popped in to say
That I used to write a lot of it
Before realising it was mostly shit.
Sometimes when you write for an audience you learn a few things about yourself. When I was doing my A-levels I wrote poetry as a way of expressing the angst of a lovesick teenager. Odes to girl-of-the-week (that’s a little harsh; there were only three or four) flowed off the tongue with all the usual mixed metaphors and ill-advised cliches; next week it would be someone else. It was like that Stevie Wonder album where each song is dedicated to a different girl, something The Beautiful South parodied in ‘Song For Whoever’. Rosalind? I have forgot that name, and that name’s woe.
Of the substantial block I wrote over the next four or five years there is only one that I still like; everything else is garbage. The moment I realised this was the moment I started doing performance poetry, and adapting my writing style to suit the ageing beatniks who hung out in the local arts centre; they were a good crowd and one of them is a very talented published writer whom we always knew was destined for greatness. I got on with them, but found the poetry was suffering. It seemed a little more egocentric, more applause-orientated, than the other stuff I’d written – carefully laid-out free verse that was designed to be looked at, rather than heard. So I stopped. Years later I went back and realised the free verse was similarly dreadful. I make no apologies. Sometimes these things are like a bad curry; it’s simply a matter of getting it out of your system.
So I have no idea what’s new in poetry or what people are listening to; I just go back to the old favourites: Duffy, Heaney, Hughes, Hart Crane, and e.e. cummings (a few feet away, on my pine bookshelf, sits his collected poems, the title scandalously capitalised). These days I stick to the prose. I don’t even write songs anymore. A little streamlining never hurt anyone. “You should stick to what you’re good at, and I’m good at being a priest.”
My regular readers (both of you) will recall that a while back I did a crowd-sourced short story that involved people adding a sentence at a time until we had something tangible; I then added a couple of pictures and Brigadier’s your uncle. Today’s exercise is even more bizarre: I had the group submit random numbers. Any number they liked, as long as it came between 1 and 300. The thread swiftly exploded and I managed to get all the data I needed in a matter of minutes.
And then, using a bizarre and convoluted system that only I understand (and will not explain) I mined the transcripts (thanks, Chrissy) and pulled out the corresponding dialogue. And here, for the benefit of the general public, is what may be the world’s first crowd-sourced Doctor Who poem. Also possibly the last.
Here we go…
—
Wilson’s dead. Inform the Emperor Dalek
it slipped my memory. You see, I’m going for a little trip myself.
Oh, yes, yes, indeed, yes.
Is that you, Yates? Where are you?
So they’re abandoning us. They’re not even going to try
and seal the shaft. Deja Vu.
You’re sure he’s still in bed?
You are interrupting me. There’s nothing to forgive
No doubt, I shall join them.
Just get down here. Come to me.
Where am I? Let me out!
Of course I’m real. Do you know
what I did for a job when they threw me out of school?
Go along and see. Go along and see.
– Well, possibly she’s taking a stroll in the garden.
– What do you mean?
– I mean, I suppose it’s time I should be going.
– Yes, I know, but he was trying to help you.
Hey hey! Mama mia! Bellissima.
All right, I’ll take it. Greyhound
to Trap One. We will survive. We will survive. Now you will help us.
Brian of Morbius 