Is poetry on its last legs? Are the lights going out all over Bloodaxe?

Nobody of a school age still likes Betjeman. Modern poetry (as in poetry written right now, this mellenium) is totally different from poetry written at the start of the last century and older (which is mostly the poetry that is stil l taught in schools) because language and the way language is used has changed so dramatically in the last fifty years. So, I don't find it at all surprising that teaching kids Betjeman (and even Larkin! Shock!) is going to thought of as totally, unbearably shit. More than novels, plays etc which can be about a good story, poetry is about language. Poetry is not timeless. Language is not timeless. Look at the fate of the poor old strong rhyme. I genuinely think that the best way that young people can be taught poetry is through very, very modern poetry. Poetry that reflects our society and language right now. From that point, you can move backwards towards Larkin, Eliot and... even, maybe, at a push, with a lot of luck, the boring old romantic poets. To get any young person to take notice you've got to start off by teaching them poetry that is the opposite of what they think of as poetry - i.e. boring, difficult, overly-heartfelt, elitist, irrelevent, poncy toss. Lucky for us, there's tons of new poetry which would be perfect for the job. But I'm sure the curriculum probably takes about ten years to catch up with anything so poetry will always be at least a little bit past it. I'm thinking of Daljit Nagra, Kathryn Simmonds, Roddy Lumsden, Jonathan Asser - these are exciting poets! And performance poetry too - that includes groups like Aisle 16 as well as (yawn!) Eminem. Although there are so many superior rappers to Eminem: Blak Thought, Talib Kweli, Dizzee Rascal, Mos Def, Jemini. These people use innovative language, rhythm, diction. I love poetry, I read a lot of it, I write a lot of it, and if someone asked me to show them something that represented poetry, I would not read them 'if'!!! And Daisy Goodwin has no fucking idea. She can burn. "The top ten poets" are all totally irrelevant too. Armitage (sounding very dated), Carol Ann Sucky hasn't changed in decades, Heaney is too stodgy and, no matter how talented we all think he is, he is not writing anything that is interesting to young people . Does anyone else remember Andrew Motion's birthday rap poem? That is the perfect example of why no young person should be told to read "the top ten poets." Joe

"'Twenty years ago everyone could name a Larkin or a Betjeman poem and had read them." Oh yah, and kids played hoop-lah with Penny Farthing tyres while jovial working class gentlemen in flat-caps smoked pipes and talked about the Queen. And we all had keys to each other's doors and the locks were made out of a sort of paper. Why, when I was three years old, I distinctly remember my dad prepping up the grammophone so we could all Morris dance to what-was-then-considered the cutting edge pop rhythms of Philip Larkin mumbling into a microphone. Joe's right - if kids today don't know squat about poetry, it's because they get spoon-fed boring shit in a dead language throughout the entire syllabus up to GCSE level. It inspires no response in them - they just get told what they're supposed to think about so that they can pass exams. Correct me if I'm wrong, but with regards to fiction, aren't children encouraged to read just about anything? There may be certain texts the syllabus favours, but generally, using the library, opening a book, and getting through a story are all considered wonderful things. This way, you maximise the chance of the chiddlers being able to find *something* they like, and getting addicted to it. With poetry, it's "You must appreciate this because I say it's good and if you don't understand why it's good then you'll never be a smart person." Cue maximum resentment. I don't think poetry is dying out, but it does suffer, more than any other art, from having reporters and advocates who are totally blind and single-minded about what they like, and ruthless in asserting that everything else is so insignificant as to be non-existent. And God, yes! Andrew Motion's mo-fo'ing, stupendously pathetic Birthday Rap travesty! It makes me want to simultaneously tear his fingers out of their sockets whilst eating my own fist.

I love Hughes and Heaney now but I hated, despised and raged against Heaney whilst in school. All those sods, frogs, mud etc... I couldn't stand it. And no matter how much I am blinded by my love of Ted Hughes, I still don't think he should be taught pre-Alevel. Although I really want to think that they'll love it, they probably won't. In fact, they'll probably hate it. I loved Crow Tyrannosaurus when I was in school. That poem made me a poet probably more than anything else... but still, save Hughes for A-level methinks. Unless it's that amazing book of children's poetry he did - what's it called Jon? Moon something? Joe

Um, being able to 'recite' a poem, doesn't mean you have an appreciation or undestand any of it... My grandfather can recite loads of poems, but when we get to talking about what they might mean, he is the first to admit he doesn't have a clue. I liked poetry at school, but only really got into a University - because there I was given the tools to appreciate it. I myself love Hughes, and even Heaney, and I also love all those American modernists like Carlos Williams, Pound, H.D, Jeffers... I like Shakespeare's sonnets. I know a teacher who was made to use Eminem as a start to poetry discussion in class. She thought this was terrible, but I thought it was quite nice. Start somewhere people know and expand on it. Even Heaney says Eminem is a poet. When people look back to a great educationary age, it never happened. Kids learned to recite but not understand, and not just poetry. It was bollocks. Kids are much cleverer now. I reckon.

"Better stand back Cos here's an age attack And the heir to the throne Is twenty-one" "throne/one"... Surely that's a treasonable offence? Motion's not even worthy of serious discussion. Utter shit from the very epitome of a hack.

Everyone knows Andrew Motion is cack.

The best (meaning worst) thing about the poem was that, being so very aware of how times have changed since he was a lad, Motion saw fit to explain to readers that he had divided his poem into A & B because, in days of yore, records had (get this,) an A-side and B-side. What he failed to mention was that the lyrics of almost every record ever produced are more poetic than his attempt to poeticise them. Ted Hughes wrote lots of good poetry for kids - 'Moonwhales' is just the tip of the iceberg, Joe. All of which makes it more unbelievable that kids are forced to read his adult work. I agree that 'Crow' shouldn't really be approached pre-A Level. I still hate Heaney. He's everything that fanatical, middle-aged poetry commentators want poets to be, everything that the ordinary person fears in poetry and everything that good poets defy. And yes, kids are cleverer these days. I reckon there are far more people below 30 who understand poetry than above 30.

i think the difficulty is that writing off, or predictions of, the future for poetry based on larkin or betjeman is missing the point. it's not that poetry is in decline, but how we use it, remember it and live with it has changed. although most people can't refer to larkin or betjeman, how many of them would be able to recall stanzas or lines from poems from many different registers? i think the over-reliance on the heavyweights needs to be addressed, and poet-ers themselves need to accept that populist forms have a semblance of value to all poetry. just a thought, like.