I, the Slush Poet, am beginning to regret my decision to chronicle 2012 in verse. When I hatched the idea at the end of December, I failed to anticipate several factors: the voracity of my hatchlings, the paucity of inspiring news to feed to them and the fickleness of their eclectic appetites.
Writing a poem a day is easy (unless, like Niall O’Sullivan, you restrict yourself to terza rima). What is hard is varying the style and voice sufficiently to avert a suffocating boredom from afflicting both poet and reader alike. I think I have managed admirably so far, judging by the varied comments left on the Slush Poet blog or tweeted straight at me.
But it is becoming a strain. What occupies the world’s news media changes much more slowly than I ever imagined. There are only so many poems one can write about greedy bankers or royal arse kissing. And I don’t like to be too obvious in my responses to the news. Finding a tangential link that fertilizes my wordy organ is getting harder: I think it might be going numb from over-use. Each new day brings instead of fresh headlines a mounding urge to lay. I look for golden eggs, I find guano.
Easy! Get people to Tweet you news tit-bits which aren't necessarily in the headlines. Have you heard the one about scientists trying to produce artificial meat in a lab?
ReplyDeleteOr local news?
ReplyDeleteOur local paper I'm sure is typical of most of the country (now I worry it isn't) - dominated by fights, local drug hauls, A&E unable to cope, waste collection issues, traffic issues, Rose Queen photos, rugby scores/gossip, more fights, and planning permissions (approved, denied and ignored). And is remarkable in its brevity and lack of detail on the rare occasion when a major newsworthy event does happen locally. Full of potential poetry though?
Please don't give up Andy.
Sally! You might just be onto something! Real things happen to real people at the local level. I'm on it...
DeleteThank you!