Poems, by which I mean the best of them, are some of my favourite things. Some carefully chosen words chosen by someone quite good at choosing them and put into a shape by them and they are good at doing that, too, when words are already one's favourite and most interesting things. There can't be much wrong with that, can there. It is a victimless offence if it is an offence at all.
But the word 'poem' has always brought with it associations of something a bit fey. I know that poems can be harder and much more atavistic, if need be, than the appreciation of the 'good shooting scene' I heard being lauded in the office today by two lads who like films, especially if they feature Al Pacino and Robert de Niro.
But poems, as we know, aren't all about daffodils and swooning and, if you want to take on harder blokes than me on the issue then I'd be glad to direct you to Don Paterson, Ciaran Carson, Sean O'Brien and Tony Harrison. And Carol Ann Duffy.
It's not so much that I don't feel happy to be regarded as someone who writes 'poems'. I just don't like thinking of myself as a 'poet'. When I met Ian Duhig a few years ago, he asked my name and thought for a moment and then asked, 'Are you a poet?' and I had to say, no, not really.
I have written some poems. I wish they weren't called that and I wish that Roger McGough, amongst others, hadn't made it sound even more camp by calling them 'pomes' in the 1970's, when fey was the much more the message. But it's too late now to ask for a re-wording, a move to re-name them 'word-structures' in some hopeless, politically correct move that could never hope to succeed. And so, poems, and thus, poet, it is.
But I don't want to be thought of as a 'critic', either. I put my brief summaries of books I have read on here and that is known as 'reviewing', which is fine, but also 'criticism'. But I don't want to be thought of as a 'critic', which is generally regarded as having something bad to say about the work under consideration. In most cases I wouldn't have read the book in the first place if I hadn't expected to like it and so I hope I rarely post serious reservations.
But, as I was re-reading Larkin's Further Requirements, the follow up book to Required Writing, the volume of collected reviews, interviews and sundry items, I was immediately impressed by the way he wouldn't use superlatives to describe the best recent poems or else what would be left to describe the best of all time, among which he mentions Tennyson. But he remains refreshing, after all these years, when reviewing the Guinness Book of Poetry 1958-59, presumably the Forward or Salt book of its day, and saying,
And yet there is not much in it. More potent factors are the rottenness of poetry in any year...
And wouldn't it be great if critics said so more often if given books to comment on that they didn't like. So many reviews these days seem to approach the challenge like an O level student who regards their job as proving that the author in question was a genius and it falls to them to establish the fact.
Not everything is a new, mind-blowing revolution in the art of letters. Most of it is, inevitably, derivative, and if we must be called 'poets', which is flattering to some of us, or 'critics', which I don't like the sound of, then we ought to do the job properly.
Whatever dirt Larkin was attributed with, and I'll just about allow the Thatcherism into this bargain, there was a certain honesty to admire in him. And, with a curriculum vitae of good, old fashioned, left wing credentials to my name, it won't make me a rabid right-winger to say so.
I'm happy to say that in each year of doing this website I have had no problem in finding something to genuinely admire when picking a favourite to nominate as the year's best but it might be that I've lucky so far.
