Magazine August/September
Posted: Sat Aug 05, 2017 11:41 am
Hi All
As I’ve invited those who disagreed with my magazine articles about standards in written competitions to post them here on the forum so they can be discussed, I’ll kick things off with a response to some of the relevant comments made in the August/September issue.
To begin with, thank you to Neil for publishing the articles, and I particularly appreciate the supportive comments he made in his editorial. It’s an important subject which needs public discussion, and it’s been an opportunity to (among other things) draw attention to what Brenda Joy and Ellis Campbell have written about the importance of correct metre, and the award-winning poems by Shelley Hansen and Will Moody which exemplify that. (My “A Man Alone” has also just been posted in the poetry section.)
To begin with Freda Harvey’s letter, I understand exactly what Freda is saying and I’m sure there are many others who share her frustration. Just as there are poets who don’t measure up on the performance stage because it’s simply not their “thing”, there are those who have difficulty coping with the ABPA requirements for written competitions. (And it’s worth remembering that the vast majority of the population can’t do either!) We have to play to our strengths and, as Ellis says “…metre comes naturally to some poets, most have to work hard at it and some seem to find it impossible to grasp.” It’s obviously easier for those in the first category, however there are plenty of poets who have struggled at first, but learnt with practice and guidance how to rise to the occasion. It’s something that needs to be worked at, and success rarely comes quickly. The brutal reality in written competitions is that a judge usually has to make decisions between several poems that have strong stories, so it may be a stumble in metre, rhyme, or grammar that makes the difference. If performing is Freda’s strength, as Neil says it is with him, then concentrating on that may be the most logical and satisfying way to go. It’s up to her. I’ve pointed out before that I’m never going to be any great shakes as a dancer, and that’s just the way it is despite what I might hope for. Needless to say, I don’t enter dance competitions!
Then there’s “The Mongrel Bard” by “Bandy Bill”, which is hardly worth a comment. It seems to be about performance rather than written competitions, and the fact that it’s hidden behind a pseudonym says a lot.
Which brings me to Tony Hammill’s “Bush Poetry for Dummies”. It puzzles me that something with this title and the suggestion that what I’d written must be “pretty daunting” to an emerging poet then goes on to hit the reader with a mish-mash of technical jargon that would make even an experienced poet’s eyes glaze over. Nevertheless, let’s analyse what was said.
To begin with, nobody is suggesting that all a judge does to check metre is count syllables. That’s absurd. Counting syllables is simply one indicator that something might be wrong. Of course it’s important to identify the pattern(s) of strong and weak stresses, and I thought I’d made that abundantly clear by example in the June/July issue with the nonsense stanza about seagulls (with the specific instruction “focus on where the stresses fall”) and the “Metric Madness” poem. Both were aimed at showing where the stresses are, what masculine and feminine line-endings are, and how it appears when metres are mixed up at random. But perhaps Tony overlooked that. Still, it’s pleasing to see that he agrees on the importance of metre: “The metre is the vehicle that carries your wonderful story and it must not be a jalopy! Both are important. And you must choose words whose natural rhythm fit the rhythm of your metre.” Precisely. And later on he emphasises the importance of “full rhyme and not assonance or part-rhyme”…again exactly what I’ve been saying.
In between, however, he unnecessarily complicates matters by getting tied up with tetrameter, pentameter, and heptameter. Surely the “emerging poet” doesn’t need to be saddled with this terminology on top of references to the iambus and the anapest? They’re not exactly terms regularly used on this site for, if we’re talking about line-length, it’s usually in terms of syllables…the common 14-syllable line, for example, rather than “iambic heptameter”. I’m not going to get into a detailed iambus-anapest-heptameter-pentameter analysis of TMFSR here. Suffice to say that I tried to apply Tony’s theory about Paterson’s use of the anapest and iambus to lines other than the very few he quoted and it nearly did my head in. Anyway, all in all I’m rather confused by this article, which purports to “…demolish some common myths about poetry construction and, at the risk of being tedious to some review the basics.” But it does so by agreeing with the essential thrust of my articles while suggesting it’s doing something different, adding an extra layer of complexity, and making a statement such as: “Poetry is not about rigid uniformity; it is about a few basic rules which set the stage for VARIETY.”
That’s very misleading. At no stage did I advocate “rigid uniformity”. Here’s what I wrote in the first article in the April/May issue: “For me, ‘clear mastery of metre’ means that the poet has to be demonstrably in complete control of the metric structure of a poem. There can certainly be variations within a poem, but they need to follow an identifiable pattern. So ‘clear mastery’ does NOT mean a haphazard mix of different metres, nor does it mean random combinations of masculine and feminine line-endings. If I see a poem with quite erratic metre in a written competition I wonder why the writer didn’t take a bit more time to get it ‘right’. Is it carelessness, a case of not considering it important, or a lack of understanding?” That, in a nutshell, highlights the problem a judge faces…determining whether a poet is “in complete control of the metric structure of a poem”. And at this point it is worth noting that the ABPA score sheet does anything but advocate “rigid uniformity”. It allows for more than one metrical pattern in a poem, and specifically encourages “unusual or inventive” structures. To help Tony refresh his memory, here is what the score sheet actually says regarding metre:
Poets should demonstrate, whatever the pattern (or patterns) used, a clear mastery of metre, avoiding inversions and laboured changes from the speech patterns relevant to the poem. Special recognition should be considered for any metrical pattern that is particularly effective because it is unusual or inventive.
Plenty of scope for “VARIETY” there!
Cheers
David
As I’ve invited those who disagreed with my magazine articles about standards in written competitions to post them here on the forum so they can be discussed, I’ll kick things off with a response to some of the relevant comments made in the August/September issue.
To begin with, thank you to Neil for publishing the articles, and I particularly appreciate the supportive comments he made in his editorial. It’s an important subject which needs public discussion, and it’s been an opportunity to (among other things) draw attention to what Brenda Joy and Ellis Campbell have written about the importance of correct metre, and the award-winning poems by Shelley Hansen and Will Moody which exemplify that. (My “A Man Alone” has also just been posted in the poetry section.)
To begin with Freda Harvey’s letter, I understand exactly what Freda is saying and I’m sure there are many others who share her frustration. Just as there are poets who don’t measure up on the performance stage because it’s simply not their “thing”, there are those who have difficulty coping with the ABPA requirements for written competitions. (And it’s worth remembering that the vast majority of the population can’t do either!) We have to play to our strengths and, as Ellis says “…metre comes naturally to some poets, most have to work hard at it and some seem to find it impossible to grasp.” It’s obviously easier for those in the first category, however there are plenty of poets who have struggled at first, but learnt with practice and guidance how to rise to the occasion. It’s something that needs to be worked at, and success rarely comes quickly. The brutal reality in written competitions is that a judge usually has to make decisions between several poems that have strong stories, so it may be a stumble in metre, rhyme, or grammar that makes the difference. If performing is Freda’s strength, as Neil says it is with him, then concentrating on that may be the most logical and satisfying way to go. It’s up to her. I’ve pointed out before that I’m never going to be any great shakes as a dancer, and that’s just the way it is despite what I might hope for. Needless to say, I don’t enter dance competitions!
Then there’s “The Mongrel Bard” by “Bandy Bill”, which is hardly worth a comment. It seems to be about performance rather than written competitions, and the fact that it’s hidden behind a pseudonym says a lot.
Which brings me to Tony Hammill’s “Bush Poetry for Dummies”. It puzzles me that something with this title and the suggestion that what I’d written must be “pretty daunting” to an emerging poet then goes on to hit the reader with a mish-mash of technical jargon that would make even an experienced poet’s eyes glaze over. Nevertheless, let’s analyse what was said.
To begin with, nobody is suggesting that all a judge does to check metre is count syllables. That’s absurd. Counting syllables is simply one indicator that something might be wrong. Of course it’s important to identify the pattern(s) of strong and weak stresses, and I thought I’d made that abundantly clear by example in the June/July issue with the nonsense stanza about seagulls (with the specific instruction “focus on where the stresses fall”) and the “Metric Madness” poem. Both were aimed at showing where the stresses are, what masculine and feminine line-endings are, and how it appears when metres are mixed up at random. But perhaps Tony overlooked that. Still, it’s pleasing to see that he agrees on the importance of metre: “The metre is the vehicle that carries your wonderful story and it must not be a jalopy! Both are important. And you must choose words whose natural rhythm fit the rhythm of your metre.” Precisely. And later on he emphasises the importance of “full rhyme and not assonance or part-rhyme”…again exactly what I’ve been saying.
In between, however, he unnecessarily complicates matters by getting tied up with tetrameter, pentameter, and heptameter. Surely the “emerging poet” doesn’t need to be saddled with this terminology on top of references to the iambus and the anapest? They’re not exactly terms regularly used on this site for, if we’re talking about line-length, it’s usually in terms of syllables…the common 14-syllable line, for example, rather than “iambic heptameter”. I’m not going to get into a detailed iambus-anapest-heptameter-pentameter analysis of TMFSR here. Suffice to say that I tried to apply Tony’s theory about Paterson’s use of the anapest and iambus to lines other than the very few he quoted and it nearly did my head in. Anyway, all in all I’m rather confused by this article, which purports to “…demolish some common myths about poetry construction and, at the risk of being tedious to some review the basics.” But it does so by agreeing with the essential thrust of my articles while suggesting it’s doing something different, adding an extra layer of complexity, and making a statement such as: “Poetry is not about rigid uniformity; it is about a few basic rules which set the stage for VARIETY.”
That’s very misleading. At no stage did I advocate “rigid uniformity”. Here’s what I wrote in the first article in the April/May issue: “For me, ‘clear mastery of metre’ means that the poet has to be demonstrably in complete control of the metric structure of a poem. There can certainly be variations within a poem, but they need to follow an identifiable pattern. So ‘clear mastery’ does NOT mean a haphazard mix of different metres, nor does it mean random combinations of masculine and feminine line-endings. If I see a poem with quite erratic metre in a written competition I wonder why the writer didn’t take a bit more time to get it ‘right’. Is it carelessness, a case of not considering it important, or a lack of understanding?” That, in a nutshell, highlights the problem a judge faces…determining whether a poet is “in complete control of the metric structure of a poem”. And at this point it is worth noting that the ABPA score sheet does anything but advocate “rigid uniformity”. It allows for more than one metrical pattern in a poem, and specifically encourages “unusual or inventive” structures. To help Tony refresh his memory, here is what the score sheet actually says regarding metre:
Poets should demonstrate, whatever the pattern (or patterns) used, a clear mastery of metre, avoiding inversions and laboured changes from the speech patterns relevant to the poem. Special recognition should be considered for any metrical pattern that is particularly effective because it is unusual or inventive.
Plenty of scope for “VARIETY” there!
Cheers
David