Move over, Johan                                                                      17 November 2007


Whenever there is a horse, there is a mouth. And neither utters a word. Just the environment a poet needs. Words are cheap and a horse needs a stable, grass, a jockey, a trainer, an owner, a vet, insurance and there are people who know what. Entering into a relation with a poet you need a set of sheets while entering into a relation with poetry requires enthusiasm for language — no hard man nor computer buff need apply. Poetry that is language gives you space — the illusion of space is necessary otherwise neither writing nor reading would take place, happen sounds so casual. The place of poetry in the environment is a response to a future use of language. A volume of poetry is the space where illusions are transformed into virtual, i.e. mental, emotional, social energy. Obviously when the ground is missing, the page is home to dreams and reams of chaos, and latter-day dribblers and scribblers. Writing happens today, reading tomorrow and poetry the day after the night before the publisher went to town. Yeah, yeah! Poetry is not an ism but a prism, a potential moral hazard on the way to work. Experience has its limits; it can easily be taken for a ride. As for the price, the reader will decide tomorrow whether poetry was worth the expense, outlay and excuses are always lurking in the background, in the bushes and rock gardens of the uninvited, i.e. outsiders to the generous proportions of a social gathering that functioned smoothly like a wake for instance or a take on having said that, yet singular is not quite functional or to blush while the notes are sharpened: poetry is as much in need of a breed of controllers as the nearest convulsion clinic. [We do know of course that neither gets laid but only nor gets paid. That was cheap!] The balkanisation and broccolisation of poetry has given poetics a well-deserved rest: content is to be found again and again at the Great British Beer Festival and form is making classical inroads into the teaching profession. No more rumours please, as the words have not yet been refurbished.