Everything's up to date in Putney                                               21 January 2008


Poetry can be written both ways: asking the reader to phone in so that accents and comments can merge with writing off the past with one eye on the clock and one hand in the till. Wish you were here to promote the third way. The run on a smash hit makes a breach in the grid for a clockwork orange tracksuit to come home. The page is such a commonplace for covering sense with presence that language anticipates antipathy: a smile is worth a dozen reviews. It's now apparent that rejecting both comes with a price tag attached to friendship, loyalty and a continuing support for the household gods. Troops out! Obviously! Tourism is murder! Rightly so! Reading ruins your eyes! The revolving door remains open. Meaning minus explanation and rejuvenation is embedded in language but embodied in poetry. Language may meet the eye but does it hold our attention? If hooked ask questions, if spooked throw away the motherboards. Poetry is language that doesn't get paid for saying what no-one wants to hear but what poets still want to write. Poetry is language on full board. Just reading the latest volume of poetry doesn't necessarily trick you into an aesthetic experience: be my guest and beat my chest. Outsiders, bystanders and passers-by: observe the limits of grace, describe the boundaries of blur (sic, sicco, sic) and interpret the offences caused! Systematic and sympathetic reading not only happens in academia, the world of finance is another place where value is added to experience: that's what my bank manager tells me, not when I asked but when I passed out. Poetry should be read with contempt for all the glamour that capitalist society offers its admirers. Poets only exist in their own minds, despite what many culture vultures say: society has reserved no satisfactory place for either. Patchy and sketchy, poetry plants no plots, scans no smart bookies or cookies, poetry is a brief comment on language, written without brief, written with nothing more than a biro, a right hand and a ream of paper.