Forests of Poetry
Posted: Thu Dec 02, 2010 7:13 am
I was recently challenged by another writer, for whom I have great respect, to defend the very notion of writing bush poetry. His argument was that bush poetry, as an art form, was perfected about 100 years ago. What artistic merit, therefore, can there be in simply perpetuating it?
To quote him directly: "I think that the only justification for producing art in a superseded style is to parody or extend it; replicating it is a sort of technical trick; clever certainly, but what's the purpose?"
I think there a number of defences that can be offered, but this is one that has appeal for me.
Way back when, we all lived in the forests. As our technologies developed, we began to manipulate the world around us, to make it more to our liking. We now live in steel and concrete constructs, and the old forests themselves are facing extinction. While this suits many of us perfectly well, others are not so happy. It is this huge shift from our roots that has spawned the green movement. A significant proportion of our population is now fighting to support the very forests that we once took so much for granted.
(There is an irony operating here, I know, because many bush poets are quite contemptuous of the green movement, but I'll put that aside for the time being.)
In a way, it seems to me, rhyming verse is like a literary equivalent of the forests. Particularly in the days preceding the widespread use of the printed word, wandering minstrels with their rhyming stories were the principal mode of news dissemination. Now we have television, radio, the internet, etc. Similarly with entertainment.
Yet there are those amongst us who miss the intimacy of the old ways, who strive to preserve the early forms of communication/entertainment before they are lost forever. We are the 'greens' of the world of literacy.
There is one aspect to this argument that makes me feel rather uncomfortable. It casts us bush poets as 'radical conservatives' - yet, in a sense, that is exactly what we are - or so it seems to me.
To quote him directly: "I think that the only justification for producing art in a superseded style is to parody or extend it; replicating it is a sort of technical trick; clever certainly, but what's the purpose?"
I think there a number of defences that can be offered, but this is one that has appeal for me.
Way back when, we all lived in the forests. As our technologies developed, we began to manipulate the world around us, to make it more to our liking. We now live in steel and concrete constructs, and the old forests themselves are facing extinction. While this suits many of us perfectly well, others are not so happy. It is this huge shift from our roots that has spawned the green movement. A significant proportion of our population is now fighting to support the very forests that we once took so much for granted.
(There is an irony operating here, I know, because many bush poets are quite contemptuous of the green movement, but I'll put that aside for the time being.)
In a way, it seems to me, rhyming verse is like a literary equivalent of the forests. Particularly in the days preceding the widespread use of the printed word, wandering minstrels with their rhyming stories were the principal mode of news dissemination. Now we have television, radio, the internet, etc. Similarly with entertainment.
Yet there are those amongst us who miss the intimacy of the old ways, who strive to preserve the early forms of communication/entertainment before they are lost forever. We are the 'greens' of the world of literacy.
There is one aspect to this argument that makes me feel rather uncomfortable. It casts us bush poets as 'radical conservatives' - yet, in a sense, that is exactly what we are - or so it seems to me.