This video is a visual poem I put up at the request of a teacher, who wanted something for students. The teachers sent me this link about how the poem is now mandatory reading for British education and part of the GSCE anthology.
I’d never heard of it (thank god). Despite it being adapted as a song by the Arctic Monkeys and its author John Cooper Clarke being declared the “poet laureate of punk”, I was oblivious. I dug a little deeper.
Seems he makes a good 50,000 pounds a year off its royalties. Enough to keep him drinking high end whiskey and more to the point, not writing much poetry of any sort, anymore. Me, I’m rubbing pennies together to buy kimbap each day, hey! but that’s okay.
I wish him all the luck and don’t begrudge him the money. But it is bread and circuses, banal poetry. I could write this at the drop of the hat (should there be money in that hat) and it’s emblematic of how the normal consumer, reader, person encountering poetry, thinks about it. Just sentences that rise like red, rhyme with caused time. Housewife poetry. The certain genre that is also grade school poetry but which Hallmark has put its mark on. Donny Osmond of a sort. I’m sorry to say …
Yes, it is nice. Quaint. But far removed from what a poet does for and to and with this world, the time so short given. Let me explain, I’ll be brief.
Poetry isn’t of any type or sort. It is truly just one speaking from one’s soul, one’s seat of thy pants. But there is a caveat. There is study, there is a craft, there is a tradition and reading. It isn’t just sweetly connecting ends of sentences.
Reading the poem, I was reminded of how so, so, so many exclaimed surprise and astonishment and wonderment at ChatGPT writing poetry. Brilliant many stated. Myself, I investigated and found everything ChatGPT produced as poetic pap, pabulum, banal schoolgirl poetry. I asked ChatGPT to produce a poem in the style of I Wanna Be Yours. Here is the result. You be the judge.
Lately, I’ve been putting some of my own poems into visual form, on a YouTube channel. I’m getting better at this and hoped the form might appeal to more people to read what I’ve had to say, over the last 50 years since I started to write. I got 7 subscribers in the last month, 4 are myself.
But it has always been that way. Poet’s aren’t made as marketeers. Even Cohen had to turn to music to make a dime from his fine musings. William Carlos Williams had to put dollar bills into his self-published books, to help people actually take a free copy from him. I could go on and on and on, about this confederacy of dunces, poets dance among. I subscribe to Milosz’s view of what poetry is, is about.
Alas, I’m not writing poetry for notoriety or money or anything such. I wouldn’t be 50 years on … But sometimes, it does rub the wrong way. I look at a video like this guy’s. He sets up a camera and eats for 8 or 10 minutes. Enormous amounts. Within days, he gets millions of views. I’m luck to get one or two over a month. Maybe you see my point. Binge eating and fails - our new bread and circuses.
I’m not saying poetry is dead. But it certainly is getting very little airtime this day and age. I remember Maya Angelou saying that she hopes poetry continues to be kept a secret. That way, one day, untainted, it may be there to save the world. I sure hope she is right.
Ok. Just incase any bad ass is reading this and has read this far. Here, typed out, not a word changed, is my own retort, my own cover, my own proof any idiot can write a poem like John Cooper Clarke’s (and boy I hate people who go by 3, 4, 5 names).
I Don’t Wanna Be Yours
I don’t wanna be your libido
running around in a speedo.
I don’t wanna be your lap dog.
I’m not a bump on your fireplace log.
If you like your men so hot
Let me be your Craigslist guy
It’s you, who’ve been bought.
I don’t wanna be your bed cover
For I’m sure I’d be who you’d smother.
I don’t wanna be your bank account
I’m not for sale, any amount.
Let me be your garbage bag
Throw me out each day
I truly don’t care
I don’t wanna be yours
Near you anywhere.
I don’t wanna be your kettle
You’ll just bore me over tea.
I don’t wanna be your heavy metal
You deserve banality.
I don’t wanna be your lip gloss
You know, I don’t give a toss.
Shallow as the Red Sea
That’s how shallow salt like me can be.
Shallow, shallow, shallow, swallow
I don’t wanna be yours
I’d rather be single ‘n hollow.
Poetic Nonsense