E Y E W E A R, THE BLOG - FREEDOM MEANS BEING UNAFRAID TO WRITE WHAT YOU THINK

Heard on the BBC this morning - English may become "a dead language" in a thousand years, or at least, a minority language, like French.  Dear me!  I am not sure becoming like French is such a disaster.  The English have relied a little too much lately on the soft power of their mother tongue, and it might do us all some corrective good to brush up on our Chinese, and learn some international and cultural humility.  That being said, I doubt that the poems and novels of the English language will be as dead as the Greats for some time, and I am sure that this new Classical English, however quaint and obscure, will be studied for a few more thousand years, if only by scholars and saints.  Though, it must be said, I am not yet convinced that human civilisation in its present consumerist form will survive.

A few years back, I spent a bizarre night, lecturing on contemporary poetry, to the QES (Queen's English Society), and Dr. Bernard Lamb (a writer of naughty limericks, as on Eyewear ). It comes as something of a surprise then, to hear him on the BBC radio this evening, debating with poet-critic-publisher Michael Schmidt (one of the best minds British poetry and poetry criticism has), on whether or not poetry must rhyme and use traditional metre. Lamb insists it should, and wants the "Poetry Society" to tell him what poetry is, suggesting that any society that doesn't know what poetry is shouldn't be a poetry one; of course, he's very wrong. Poetry is essentially unknowable, and poetry gestures to new, yet unheard, or written, ways of saying. It also, obviously, resists easy definition, and narrow formal limits. What's the point of poetry, or a poet, who always toes a line? Surely, any rule that a society - especially one designed to uphold the "Quee...

I was the guest speaker at the Queen's English Society meeting the other night, at The New Cavendish Club. It was a good mix of people, some very articulate indeed, such as Dr. and Mrs. Bernard Lamb , the Times Crossword expert Roy Dean (who presented me with a copy of his book Mainly In Fun ), and the golden-voiced former BBC radio broadcaster Peter Barker , who read poems between the music on BBC 3, along with other clever and oustpoken men and women, including a chap who is a tram driver and a lady who confessed (privately) to being an atheist - her secret is safe with me. After lecturing on my subject, "Trends in 21st century Poetry" for 45 minutes, I was asked to read my own poems, for about another 25. I read from Cafe Alibi , Rue du Regard , and a few new poems from my UEA MA dissertation. Then there was a coffee and biscuits break, then we debated the state of contemporary poetry, and finally had sandwiches and port in the library. Those interested in learning ...