Wednesday 13 May 2009

The BBC Does Poetry

The BBC, in one of its periodic fits of do-goodery, is about to launch a Poetry Season, beginning pretty much as it means to go on - with a waffly account of Why Poetry Matters by the endlessly irritating Griff Rhys Jones, whose passionate love of poetry will, I fancy, come as news to most of us. The BBC of course is convinced we can only swallow the bitter pill of poetry if it's helped down by a celebrity - hence we are promised My Life In Verse with Robert Webb (one half of popular comedy duo Mitchell and Webb, m'lud) - and more celebs to follow under the same banner. There's also Armando Iannucci on Milton, and the obligatory gameshow element, in the form of a children's recitation contest with the self-explanatory title Off By Heart. Perhaps the most bizarre item - though I'm sure there will be competition - is Simon Schama's John Donne, in which Donne's poems are read, on-screen and off, and discussed at length, by the preening Irish actress Fiona Shaw. What on earth was the thinking behind giving to this most assertively masculine of English poets a female, Irish voice and intonation? It seems, frankly, bonkers, and ruins the enjoyment - and, come to that, the meaning - of the verse.
Ah well, perhaps these worthy projects have some good effects. Maybe some people who are unversed (as it were) in poetry will be drawn in by that sprinkle of celebrity stardust. Maybe it's good to be reminded, however crassly, that poetry matters - though it's a difficult argument to frame at the best of times, even by those of us who love it and somehow know it does matter. Are we saying anything more than that it matters to us? Maybe that is all that can usefully be said.

11 comments:

  1. I'd like to hear Peter Capaldi reading Burns.

    "Wee, sleekit, cowrin', fuckin' beastie....."

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  2. Ted Hughes wrote a letter to Kenneth Baker (the Sec of State for Education)in 1988 suggesting that poetry be learnt by heart in schools. In the letter he says that children who are "awash in the rubbish incoherence of the jabber in the sound-waves" need the "blocks of achieved" and exemplary language", which poetry provides as an anchor of standards. This seems right to me. Good poetry is a vaccine against the swine flu of cliche and thoughtless speech.

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  3. I've been surprised in the past at how the most unlikely people can sometimes be secret occasional poets, solely for their own satisfaction. As ever the BBC aims low and in line with the patronising assumptions of its producers.

    I'm glad you've outed G R-J. Someone really had to.

    BTW Peter Capaldi did the voice-over for a recent documentary. He has the most pleasant voice, friendly, soft and playful. You'd never guess it could also belong to Malcolm Tucker.

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  4. I too am filled with hatred of GRJ, that irritable homunculous of BBC values.

    One of the key things that I am (now) glad to have had forced upon me at my prep school was the endless learning of poetry by rote. In fact I think that without that indelible foundation I would not have nearly as much of an appreciation of poetry as I now do.

    Im not much of a fan of listening to poetry though, I prefer to read it and savour every word, rather than have the piece drowned in oleagenous slick by the overly-cadenced voice of a luvvie

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  5. "Off By Heart", eh? I predict a lot of good old Edward Lear, but some brat reciting Kipling's If to win.

    Can't remember if I've mentioned this before but my father made me learn Shelley's Ozymandias off by heart when I was about 8 or 9. I've no idea what good it did me except that I can still recite Ozymandias off by heart. I didn't understand a bloody word of it til years later.

    In one of Michael Palin's programmes he did Ozymandias as a party piece and made several errors, as I loudly and irritatingly pointed out to my fellow viewers at the time.

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  6. haha brit yeah ozymandias is also one of the ones that I had to memorise! like michael palin I've also probably got to the stage now where I've replaced bits of it with my own new 'freestyle' bits too

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  7. Very good Dearieme - and I love that 'blocks' quote Uncle T - and Peter Capaldi is indeed a man of many parts... Wise words Will - and to you and Brit: My name is Ozzy Manders, Dean of King's... Remember that?

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  8. I'm quite excited by this season. So much so, I wrote this:-


    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GaXfw3ORWz8

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  9. I once visited a chinese doctor due to lethargy and depression, and he advised me not to eat spicy food as i had to much heat (or yang) in my body. And it worked. So it's probably more of an individual thing (i.e some people will feel ill and rundown if they eat curry regularly, whereas for others it may well be beneficial.)

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  10. Shit, wrong post.

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  11. Hope you don't mind but I would like to add my comment in the form of a link to my short film adaptation of John Donne's poem 'Woman's Constancy'.

    http://www.vimeo.com/2153206

    Best wishes
    John Le Brocq

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