Tuesday 13 October 2020

The Problem with Poetry

 Poetry has a problem. The problem is how it is taught in schools. Poetry has been part of the English Literature curriculum at GCSE (and if you are as old as me, O levels) for a very long time.

Now I'd been the first to say that children should be exposed to poetry; of course they should. Whether that's the classics, or contemporary poetry or the fun of something like Roald Dahl's Revolting Rhymes. Song lyrics are poetry. Rap is poetry. It is everywhere.

However poetry is like a painting, a sculpture or even a finely crafted joke. It stands and falls on how it makes you feel, how you react to it. Does it make your brain think, or does it make your heart feel an emotion? Do the words stir something in your soul? Poetry that you like will always do this.

But the way it is taught sucks all of this away. Poems are stripped down to phrases, every word studied, poked, prodded and pored over. Why did the poet choose one word over another? What is the metaphor here? Yes on an academic level that's interesting, but it sterilises the words. Just as explaining a joke removes the humour, dissecting a poem results in a lifeless corpse.

I understand that this is on the curriculum and needs to be taught, but is this focus on detail doing poetry a service? Who can honestly say they enjoyed poetry in English Literature? I know I didn't and neither did my children. Perhaps taking a step back, throwing a wide range of good poetry (and less focus on the worthy but hardly uplifting War Poets) at the class, and just getting them to write about how it made them feel, rather then telling them how they should feel?

The worst thing about this, the very worst thing, is that this leaves young people thinking they dislike - no, hate - poetry. I thought that until I started to discover poetry myself, and instead of studying it under a microscope I taught myself anew to just let the words do their work on my brain, heart and soul and not worry exactly how the poet has done it. Yes like anything not all poetry is for all people, but there is something out there to be found. Something that will stir emotions or thoughts in you.

If I have any advice for people who have been put off poetry by learning it at school, it is to get out there and discover poetry for yourself, and just let it live inside you for the time it takes to read.