Articulation

The expression ‘bad poetry’ is meaningless:

critics still use it, forgetting that bad poetry

is not poetry at all – Keith Douglas

Everybody likes to play their favourite game:

analysing the shortcomings

of almost everybody else.

‘His poems stagger like a drunk

looking for a bus shelter,

and are as interesting as a fabric swatch.’

‘She always uses the wrong words,

and the nearest she ever got to poetry

was standing outside Waterstone’s in 2014.’

‘His experimental work

is all test-tube and no Bunsen burners,

and is that ash I can smell after reading?’

‘That high-profile clique has one voice

and sings the same three notes, over and over:

You see, I… You see, I… You see, I…’

But we all love some poets,

and can’t quite believe that anyone else

swoons over them as much as we do.

Their collections are like the albums

we played into the ground when we were young;

we’re not even put off by the bad artwork and the scratches.

And I bang my head against the kitchen table,

wondering what it is that people most dislike,

or like, about my every failed attempt at articulation.

None of this matters.

We write the poems which we want to read,

and if not that, then what, exactly, are we doing?