Filth by Spack

Impressively sustained, but um, outTimClare-ing Tim Clare is hardly Joe Dunthorne's finest moment.

Hmm, I dunno. There are some choice lines in it - "Drilling Izzy dry" is particularly gruesome and evocative. Still, the tone of it seems to be by turns damning and flippant. I'm not saying just because it concerns itself with date-rape the poem has to be stoic and straight to the bone - heaven knows dark humour is a great way of sugaring the pill of a more sinister tale - but it ends up being nigh-on schizophrenic. The bit where he's just raped her and she's thrown up is a good example. Nobody would suddenly exclaim about their twill shirt. Not buying it. Surely better to retain the humour at the start, and gradually peel back the layers, until the nastiness is fully exposed. Also not really buying the ending with the ID parade. Surely a) it's nearly impossible to identify a date-rapist from the victim's perspective due to the memory-affecting properties of the drug - more likely to be the witnessing of an onlooker. It's pretty flipping hard in this sort of situation to work out you've been raped in the first place. Also, b) even letting that go, there's sort-of the insinuation that Crispin got his just deserts in being ID'd by Izzy and therefore everything is A-OK. Perhaps I'm reading too much in. It just sat a little ill with me. Oh yeah, final thing is that the title seems a bit obvious.

Yeah, I agree with Bright eyes. My problem was that the technical restrictions pushed the poem in a certain direction. I don't buy the ending either but I tried various endings and none really seemed satisfactory. Maybe I should try and make it darker - and avoid any sense of Crispin getting his just desserts or of justice served. It seems too easy and tidy. But it's very hard to move things round when you've only got one vowel... Tim's right, I think, that much of the tone could be mediated through the performance. There'll be more edits of this methinks. Thanks lots and lots for the comments, Kirsty Jon Tim BBF! Joe x

agree with kirsty re comedy working into darkness. dave bamford's poem about 'the game' is a good measure. he fuckes audiences up with that one. i think the style almost makes this other-wordly. a bit clockwork orange, and so i liked the ending, the fact that he just gets a beating, the fact that 'fifty british' could get him out of it. i think this is a dark and effective satire on fings, like. was unsure of the beginning tho. the names and 'hi' - is this the gang meeting up? maybe i'm being thick, but it made me think it was an aa meeting or something, so lost the thread slightly. think it gets going with crispin. good name too adds to the Clockwork orange feel, with dasterly fops going around date raping people and thinking 'this is brill' i watched children of men again last night and so police at the end made me think of sid. looking forward to edits.

A new edit, a new ending. I give Izzy a bit more to say as well. Any feedback muchly appreciated... Joe

I've done another edit. It's ridiculously long now. The ending's better though. Joe

Liking it a great deal more now. Izzy's comeback is really good and the ending's improved. Considering the bitchy restrictions, it's a tough one to edit. Should have realised it was Oulipo. Couple easy-to-fix last niggles: 1.Whilst Crispin’s lying in his knicks, PC Sid slips pills, spliffs, billy whizz, H in Crispin’s silk shirt. ["his silk shirt"? - bit too much Crispin. It's hard to confuse the 'he' with PC Sid in this event, rozzers not being known for their dandyish attire] 2.“Filthy pig! This is impinging my civil rights!” PC Sid: “Filthy pig, is it? Civil rights, is it?" [I'd snip it to "This is impinging my civil rights!", then "PC Sid: "Civil rights, is it?" - Overdoing the title word a bit - dammit, I'm never going to warm to the title] Other than that, way better - looking pretty cool. Incidentally, I want me a Hitting Stick right now.

Aces. Thanks Kirsty. I've made those edits and changed the title too. It's now called This Is Crispin. I'm going to read it tonight in Brighton. I'll be interested to see how it goes down... Joe

"Slightly bizarre comment, Jon - if I understand correctly you're holding me up as poster boy for chipper 'gimmick' poetry." It was partly the form, yes (his is longer than any of yours!) but also the class stereotypes reminded me of your middle class girls one and the rape bit reminded me of your (of late) rather macho approach to sex scenes, with jizz flying everywhere and the girl being a very passive participant!

My real problem with the piece is the form. The only point of the exercise seems to be in overcoming the restriction, as a kind of proof of ability. Sonically (and aesthetically), univocalisms are fairly close in effect to, say, a constant stream of alliteration.

"Perhaps there's an element of playing to the gallery - but if you're going to perform to an audience, you can't really afford to scorn their tastes." Can't you win an audience around without lowering the quality of what you deliver? I dunno, Tim - this logic seems to go straight to the Eurovision poetry contest. I suppose performance poetry is an entirely different beast, where even an alliteration marathon would be warmly received. Can't help feeling, however, that this is because a performance poetry crowd generally has little or no experience of poetry. They're reacting to it chiefly as stand-up or general performance and the 'poetry' is just an extra bit of cleverness thrown in - doesn't matter if it's bad or not, just so long as it's recognisable as some kind of poetry. I guess I believe that it comes down to the same sort of thing as: do you say what you believe, or do you say what people want to hear? If a kid's being picked on, do you stand up for him or join in the ribbing? That sort of ongoing human dilemma. Now I think poetry tends to be more a cultural expression of the former stance - it's form and its language both express something about the writer. That's why it's challenging, and difficult, and unpopular. Popularism already has the lion's share of film, music, novels and TV - in these mediums, fitting in with current tastes is pretty essential. Poetry's really the last area of art where being yourself is the norm, rather then the exception. But I guess not so much anymore.

"it's about 'lowering the quality of what you deliver' - it's about different skills and different strengths." I disagree. If performance poetry audiences laugh and enjoy stuff that is plainly bad quality, then quality is an issue. It doesn't do to simply adjust your criteria so something bad is now a 'different skill' or a 'different strength'. "This is just one poem - why have you decided it represents an inexorable trend/slippery slope?" I haven't. It doesn't. We were talking about Joe's poem, then we moved onto something else, via your musings on what works as performance. It's your logic that goes to a Eurovision Poetry Contest, not Joe's poem. "I mean, it's not as if it's a cliquey scene or anything." I'm sorry - you're arguing that the audience's reaction is more valid because it's a *clique*? People do go to see performance poetry - not in droves, but there are quantities between droves and cliques. If you go to a poetry 'reading' and then go to a performance poetry night, you will usually find two different kinds of audience. I find it very unlikely, from what I've seen of the latter, that they all have a shelf full of poetry at home. "If I'm wrong, and it's populist and easy, then why don't you knock out a couple in your spare time and prove your point?" I don't need to. You've done it already! But in any case, you're missing my point. Performing well, being funny - that requires particular qualities of character, certain skills. Obviously, not just anyone can do it, just like not anyone can be a pop star or a soap actor. But it's really about the end results, or what you do with these skills, isn't it? It is entirely possible for something to involve a tremendous amount of hard work, practice, skill and dedication and still end up with... well, look at Eurovision. So it follows that it's entirely possible for successful performance poetry to be bad poetry. And you would well expect such a situation, because the best effects of poetry are generally subtle, and subtlety does not grab the ear of an audience. I would say, as well, that a non-popularist artform, or method of practicing an artform, is harder than doing it in a popularist way, simply because popularism is very formula-based. It might take you a while to crack the formula, but once you've settled into it, it will hold for a good while. You know full well that when you're performing you have tricks up your sleeve which you can deploy with almost guaranteed results. Good poetry, to my mind, actively avoids formula, which means you simply shouldn't have such well-tested methods to rely on. Can you deny that such an approach is going to be more difficult?

Well, then it's really a case of where we think my judgment ends and my tastes begin. But there really isn't much you can do with poetry that *isn't* subtle except for very strong kinds of alliteration, metre, assonance and rhyming. Generally, the more a poem relies on these, the more it looks like a nursery rhyme.

I think you're being closed minded, Jon. Too much poetry is subtle. I think subtlety is the easy option. And obscurity is the easy option. It's this unhelpful idea that the type of poetry that only communicates to a select few must be superior. Simon Armitage gets lots of flack, basically, because he appeals to lots and lots of people. And his poems are sometimes funny and sometimes they're just exercises in him showing off. Not subtle at all. Watching him at a recent poetry gala (with lots of other "subtle" high literary poets) it was abundantly obvious that he was the best. Everything else was dull and dry and righteous. There's few groups more highbrow than the Oulipo crowd. Most of their stuff is horrendously difficult (or, if you like, subtle) and has a tiny audience of crossword-loving geeks. I thought it'd be interesting to try and turn out something more approachable: thus the narrative. In performances, the poems I enjoy most are the ones I can follow. On the page, I'm happier for things to be a bit more 'out there'. Joe

"I think subtlety is the easy option. And obscurity is the easy option. It's this unhelpful idea that the type of poetry that only communicates to a select few must be superior." Those three sentences don't seem to follow on from one another at all. Subtlety isn't easy. Being totally ineffectual and *calling* it 'subtle' might be easy, but subtlety is, by its nature, difficult, because the whole point of subtlety - pretty much its definition - is that it's somewhere in the narrow area between 'apparent' and 'irrelevant'. It's like trying to come up with an image that someone might notice from the corner of their eye, but which doesn't *draw* the eye. Obscurity is pretty easy, yes, but I don't think there are many poets who actively pursue obscurity - rather, obscurity is what they risk ending up with if they become too hermetic - if their own realm of reference becomes too remote from their readers', with little or no overlap. Your third sentence - "It's this unhelpful idea that the type of poetry that only communicates to a select few must be superior" - is not an idea I or anyone else has really advanced at all. It's an unhelpful idea itself to jumble things up in this way. Just because something is difficult or subtle doesn't mean it only communicates to a select few, or is written specially for them - it just means that it requires more close attention, concentration or a familiarity. I'm reminded of the fact that when I went to see 'Alien', when it was rereleased in the cinemas, a bunch of teenagers walked out about a third of the way in because there hadn't been any action yet. Your approach seems to be to say that this is a deliberate attempt to avoid communicating with a teenage audience, and hence elitist, because Ridley Scott doesn't pander to a short attention span. "Simon Armitage gets lots of flack, basically, because he appeals to lots and lots of people." Armitage doesn't get a lot of flack, and the flack he gets is because his popularity is out of proportion to how good he is, when compared with other poets. Yes, he is very good, but it's always the case that when you have a number of very good poets and one of them is inexplicably more popular than the others, there's some rancour. There's nothing really more obviously immediate about his poems than any number of witty, skilful poets who affect a sort of unpoetic voice, and to say that his poems are ever 'not subtle at all' is really, I think, very disingenuous. You're placing subtlety on far too high a plain. Armitage's humour and voice is really not the sort of thing average teenagers or children or pub stool-warmers are going to laugh raucously at, is it? It's not related to intelligence either - I live with two pretty talented IT programmers and it's fair to say that they would be far more responsive to a dirty limerick than anything in Armitage's entire canon. The simple fact that he doesn't write in completely regular metre with constant end-rhymes means he is certain to be regarded as obscure and complicated by most people. He is most definitely subtle, in the sense that I use the word. You could argue that he's popular because he's *better* than all these other poets but you really can't put that, or criticisms against him, down to accessibility. So, really, I'm not sure at what level you're disagreeing with me. When I say 'subtle', I certainly don't mean humourless, dry, affected, righteous and full of contorted sentences. "In performances, the poems I enjoy most are the ones I can follow." Well, this is exactly why I don't think poetry is very suited to performance, and why the performer, in trying to grab the ear of the audience, is steered towards bad poetry - the overuse of and overdependence on strong rhymes or repetitions bring it closer to something sort of like lyrics - and we know that good lyrics very often make for bad poetry. We saw Simon Armitage read at the T.S.Eliot awards and even though he was better than most of the others, it was really still a very stilted performance. W.N.Herbert, by singing his poem, was easily the most entertaining poet by a country mile, and yet if you were going to a concert, or play, and were confronted with that performance, you'd probably ask for your money back. So it runs both ways for me. There are exceptions, but generally, poetry becomes less like poetry, more like bad poetry, the more it becomes effective performance.

Oh, I see. Well then, we just have different tastes. I like performance poetry. You don't. (Although judging a performance poem by reading it on a screen is a bit unfair...) If you mean subtle as 'effective' then I agree with you - subtle is good. But in poetry, if someone calls something subtle I usually think they just mean quiet/safe - and that's what's easy. A tender poem about a bird in a roof. Joe x

I mean subtle as 'subtle'. I don't really understand where the confusion is coming in. Subtle doesn't mean 'effective' and it doesn't mean 'obscure', or 'quiet/safe'. It just means not blatant, not obvious - something you might miss on cursory examination, something that is important, or crucial, but doesn't immediately draw the eye or ear. Low key. Most of the effects of poetry that you and I pick up on are pretty subtle. We notice them because we're attuned to them. I don't think it's a question of taste at all - it's really about whether you want it to be judged as poetry or not. If you assert that 'performance poetry' is a type of poetry, then you can't really say it's not fair to judge it by the standards of poetry. And by the standards of poetry, constant assonance is a really pointless and dull effect. I'm not attacking your skill here, because it's what you've decided to go for, and you've achieved it - but it reminds me of Tim's earlier metaphor for poetry as a whole (and it's a more genuine representation, to my mind, of Tim's feelings towards poetry) as someone wanking onto their shoes. Would it really do anything but improve this piece if you abandoned that facet? I don't think it's a question of taste because as far as I can discern the difference between my taste and my judgment, my taste comes in when I understand and appreciate what is effective about something but still don't particularly care for it. I really fail to see what's effective or worthwhile about only using one vowel in a poem. It's even a stretch to regard that Oulipo novel that avoided the letter 'E' as having a point - I've read the explanation and am unconvinced. Now, *if* you want to look at performance poetry as something completely different, like lyrics or rap or something, and not poetry at all, then it's a different kettle of fish. I still say it's easier than poetry, but yes, you can say: it does what it sets out to do, and it has an appreciative audience, and there you have it. It's that sort of a case. If Morrissey posted his lyrics on here as poetry, I don't think I'd be a fan, but I like listening to him sing it. It all comes down to: are you saying this is poetry or not? Or, as another comparison, if someone posted the script for a comic up as a play, or even as a short story, I would probably be very critical of it, even though I love comics when they're comics. You're right that I can only really take performance poetry in short doses. And I think it is certainly possible for something to work entirely well both as performance and as poetry - I think some stuff gets very close to the mark. But this particular sort of trick is an example of where there is a sacrifice in the quality of a poem (if it is to be regarded at all as a poem) for performance. I'm not sure exactly why, in this case, it's effective in performance, but if you and Tim say it is, then it probably is. It isn't effective as a poetic technique. I really am sorry for these lengthy replies, Joe. I am just not sufficiently articulate to express my thoughts on this properly in any briefer way.

I certainly enjoyed this: ""If I'm wrong, and it's populist and easy, then why don't you knock out a couple in your spare time and prove your point?" I don't need to. You've done it already!" A genuine case of hardback copies of Larkin's collected at ten paces. Some thoughts: "If you go to a poetry 'reading' and then go to a performance poetry night, you will usually find two different kinds of audience. I find it very unlikely, from what I've seen of the latter, that they all have a shelf full of poetry at home." I think it's very difficult to discern anything much from the audiences. Once you get below a very thin tier of 'famous' poets, audiences for both reading and performance type events are disproportionately made up of friends and relatives. The hard core regular audiences for performace poetry stuff in London that I know - the people who go to two or three events a week - generally are really in to poetry and have plenty of it lying around, although I imagine many of them have piles on the floor rather than shelves. There is a big crossover on the London scene. I think I'm a performance poet but if I go to an event that I'm not performing at myself it's usually something that would be a labelled a reading. I know when I used to hang out on the London performance scene a lot there were plenty of people doing stuff that had very little to do with poetry - the guy who told stories of his everyday life in the manner of horse-racing commentator, the bloke who half-sang a series of re-workings of 'what shall we do with the drunken sailor?' That stuff's not poetry or maybe it's bad poetry but that doesn't mean that all poetry which works best in performance is bad poetry. I'm not sure performance poetry is either more or less likely to be good than page-orientated poetry.

"...doesn't mean that all poetry which works best in performance is bad poetry." Of course not, and there's enough bad page poetry to prove your other conclusion too.