What sort of poetry do you like?

 

For me, I think, poetry is an unknown entity.  Oh I remember studying poetry in school, I did A level English Literature, we had to study poetry, the war poets and Shakespeare, but I can honestly say that they made very little impression on me.  I remember names like Keats and Blake, and of course names like T S Eliot, but as for poems themselves, not much, the odd line.  sometimes, but tonight nothing is coming to me, except something about

‘Gas! GAS! Quick, boys!--An ecstasy of fumbling’

this is from the poem ‘Dulce et Decorum Est’ by Wilfred Owen.

I read it when I was thirteen and just starting to study English Literature.  It was the catalyst for my deep interest in history, and of course for my ‘never forgetting’ all of those men and women who go out there every day and fight for what?  For a government who use them?  For Queen and country? or for something they believe in?  Lets hope its the latter, at least then they can hold their heads high and say it was worth the risk, the sacrifice.

I have to write a poem, 40 lines long, or several shorter ones adding up to a total of 40 lines.  Never in my life have I written a poem, and at 49 I feel too old to begin now, but my degree is depending on me.  I need to get my act together and write something that can get me a good mark, a nice round 80 points will do nicely, but as my average over the last four courses seems to be 63, I can only hope.

My starting point for this section of the unit was to sit for ten minutes with music I am not familiar with, or that has not been listened to for a long time. I chose the 1968 album from The Beatles – Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Heart’s Club Band.

Here are just the first 16 or so lines, notes really.

Blue, pink and purple

Yellow and green

Rhyming, repeating

Ting of a bell, the downloads done

We’d love to take you home.

Head bobbing, clapping

Horns are blown,

Drums are struck.

 

Thomas Tank, singing off key,

Insects getting high,

Questions but no answers,

Insects getting high.

 

Megaphone voices, cellophane skies,

Diamonds, Paul and John.

Eyes in the sky with George

Lucy runs off with more.

 

Even when I’m wrong

I’m right.

Yesterday, I still come.

Violins wail,