Comments on: A poet’s song

By: esther jones

esther jones — Sun, 13 Jan 2008 02:45:54 +0000

another small point that artist like Kate Bush have been making beautiful song-poems, illustrating that poems are lyrics, for several decades.

QWhere do the programme makers think that ballads come from; A in a tradition of music and text spoken, or sing to music. Listen to a Martin Carthy track and you want to read the lyrics too, because they’re poetry.
What about Linton Kwesi Johnson, Benjamin Zephaniah and Lemn Sissay - all of these poets have worked with beats, rhythms and lyrics - Zephaniah famously with the wailers; Linton with the Denis Bovell dub band.

Then of course there’s Dylan and Mitchell… really don’t get me started on this. The programme needed to go much further; it’s a complete and utter fabrication of how poetry developed. The programme fails to discuss the differences between poetry and song. Really it’s a experiment to see if two ‘page poets’ can hold up to writing for ‘the stage’ can poetry become poet-treee and therefore yoof! Give me a break.

There is a complete difference of course with the artists formerly mentioned and the lyrics of a singer such as Kylie Minogue - now there’s an example of the way in which lyrics don’t stand up as poems - if you read the lyrics out to na, na, na, na, an na, na , an, it would be be unintentionally funny.

By: esther jones

esther jones — Sun, 13 Jan 2008 02:26:18 +0000

But I think the whole programme missed the point and indeed is a defining factor of the major flaw in a true understanding of the history of poetry. Poetry and music have always been bedfellows; the word sonnet comes from the Italian word sonnetto, meaning little song.

Bring it up to date; where have these people been, has no one heard of the godfather of spoken word and rap - Gil Scott Heron? What about Sonia Sanchez, the beat poets? The huge number of poets scatting to jazz in smoky clubs in the 50’s and 60’s. Poetry and music have only become estranged from each other in the heads of western purists who believe poetry only lives in the pages of an book. Nice experiment, but really hardly original. The only saving grace of this programme was the wonderful Doc Brown; intelligent, thoughtful and a powerful performer.

By: deborah egan

deborah egan — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 17:30:22 +0000

Interesting that poets are so blown away by the idea (which almost comes across ) that lyrics aren’t poetry - none of the musicians were - as they’re fluent in the move between rhythm and verbalising the way music is harnessed and integrated - are poets mono ??

But apart from these issues fantastic radio beautiful outcomes - particularly Jamie Cullum - who I’d dismissed till now as a bit boring and mainstream. Enlightening.

By: Rupert

Rupert — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 23:38:00 +0000

Oh, I’ve missed Speechification while I’ve been away for Christmas.
Like you, I’d written this one off. The trails were awful, and the concept sounded like Radio 4 at its worst. “STOP trying to make poetry cool,” I thought - and then, of course, Roger McGough’s voice popped into my mind and I was sick a little bit in my mouth.
So thanks for the recommendation - I’ll listen to it now that you’ve said it’s excellent - and I’d have missed it otherwise.