Aug 2018
Writing poetry is dead easy if you have two precious documents before your very eyes. The two documents in question are The Divine Comedy; by some 13th century Italian bloke called Dante Aligheri, and any copy of the Iliad that’s lying about the joint. You will also need a full-length mirror, a tin of Brasso and an English/Italian dictionary. When you have assembled this lot you can commence discovering whether or not you are a Dante, or just chancing your luck as a wannabe Homer
Having assembled all the necessary paraphernalia, you can begin your quest to become a poet, or discover that you are just another lost soul who wants to copyright spelling mistakes and grammatical errors in order to make a fortune from the literary outpourings of desperate to be Dantes everywhere. (Think about it, that’s not as dumb as it sounds nor is it as dumb as you will be if you attempt it.) That’s your first lesson in Danteness and Homericness. Writing literature is a paradoxical experience, and never a contradiction. So, you may have to shove Hegel out the window and line the floor of your pet hamster’s cage with the complete works of Marx.
Now you are approaching the very personal and very revealing bit of this exercise to discover whether you are a potential Dante or not. But, as always, there’s a but: before that, you may wish to check out a few historical precedents. Check out Chaucer Shakespreare. Milton, Pope. Shelley and Keats, and after the death of the Good Lord Byron, you might want to move abroad to Ireland and The USA, to get the best out of literature by having a glance at Yeats, Hopkins, Whitman and Emerson. Then there are a couple of Russian poets: Akhmatova and Ratushinskaya . Africa has the Nobel Laureate Soyinka, who shouldn’t be missed. Rabindrinath Tagore is beyond words and there is a Chinese poet named Wei Bo who is also a sublime read. World literature is like world music, a surprise around every corner-
Now this is the wonderful part of your poetic odyssey. At this point you get to look in the mirror, a lot. But first a word of caution: mirrors can be very strange, if not downright frightening things to see yourself reflected in. Put on your bravest countenance and look straight into the glacial glossy glare, and tell yourself you’re not scared of a piece of silver painted glassery that looks back at you every time you glance at it.
Having assembled all the necessary paraphernalia, you can begin your quest to become a poet, or discover that you are just another lost soul who wants to copyright spelling mistakes and grammatical errors in order to make a fortune from the literary outpourings of desperate to be Dantes everywhere. (Think about it, that’s not as dumb as it sounds nor is it as dumb as you will be if you attempt it.) That’s your first lesson in Danteness and Homericness. Writing literature is a paradoxical experience, and never a contradiction. So, you may have to shove Hegel out the window and line the floor of your pet hamster’s cage with the complete works of Marx.
Now you are approaching the very personal and very revealing bit of this exercise to discover whether you are a potential Dante or not. But, as always, there’s a but: before that, you may wish to check out a few historical precedents. Check out Chaucer Shakespreare. Milton, Pope. Shelley and Keats, and after the death of the Good Lord Byron, you might want to move abroad to Ireland and The USA, to get the best out of literature by having a glance at Yeats, Hopkins, Whitman and Emerson. Then there are a couple of Russian poets: Akhmatova and Ratushinskaya . Africa has the Nobel Laureate Soyinka, who shouldn’t be missed. Rabindrinath Tagore is beyond words and there is a Chinese poet named Wei Bo who is also a sublime read. World literature is like world music, a surprise around every corner-
Now this is the wonderful part of your poetic odyssey. At this point you get to look in the mirror, a lot. But first a word of caution: mirrors can be very strange, if not downright frightening things to see yourself reflected in. Put on your bravest countenance and look straight into the glacial glossy glare, and tell yourself you’re not scared of a piece of silver painted glassery that looks back at you every time you glance at it.
