It is the custom with Portsmouth Poetry Society that members suggest subjects for the next year's programme and then, to a greater or lesser extent, introduce that subject when it comes round.
I don't usually give it any thought until I've delivered the previous one, for which I write a short essay to offer an approach before everyone else lays before the group what they have found and have to say. But, increasingly, the notebook for ideas returns my dubious gaze as if it knows I'm struggling for an idea.
I've done the Avant Garde, which was huge fun; Francois Villon; was glad to stand in as Thom Gunn scholar; I withdrew Marvell once I'd had a further look at him, I wasn't sure I could do him justice. I think there was e.e.cummings. But now I'm at a loss.
I'm sure there's always mileage in Tennyson and, unfashionable as he seems to be, that might be the answer - to relish that gothic darkness but reflect on the age in which he lived in which a poet could be such a household name. It's a while since there was an equivalent figure.
What about 'the poetry of Place'. Is that a subject, or would it produce a disparate list.
I might try Wislawa Symborska, leave her books by the bedside and see if she retains whatever it was that made her a favourite several years ago.Or maybe pop songs,
Since you left me have you seen me with another girl,
seeming like I'm having fun,
Although she's cute she's no substitute
because you're the permanent one.
It was the subsequent Nobel Laureate, Bob Dylan, that called Smokey Robinson a poet. I might even make it Tamla Motown.
Okay, I'll take the job. I'm sure the gathered Oxford cognoscenti, having previously appointed such luminaries as Seamus Heaney, Geoffrey Hill, John Carey and Paul Muldoon would be delighted for me to turn up with a pile of old Motown 45's. And, if it goes down well, perhaps after that the song words, rather than the less successful 'poetry', of Marc Bolan.
It's amazing how a glass of Chilean Merlot can kickstart a reluctant imagination.
You darnce {my spelling]
With your lizard leather boots on
And pull the strings
That change the faces of men
You diamond browed hag
You're a glitter-gaunt gangster
I don't think asnybody's going to have the nerve to say that's not poetry.