UPDATE: it’s finished. Here’s the PDF (it should be accessible to screen-readers and so on – let me know if you see any problems with the format).
Or is it a chapbook? Anyway, it’s a tabloid-sized, 12-page, newsprint (thank you Newspaper Club) sequence of poems (19 in all). The poems are in the not-entirely-forgotten rhyme royal form which is a kind of turbo-sonnet, probably brought to English poetry by Chaucer – everything’s packed into seven lines. Boom. And, although the poems in Royal are not thematically linked – they are chained together by rhyme (the last line of each poem rhymes with the first line of the next) to make a sequence. I’ve been obsessed with rhyme royal since I met one in a Zoom poetry class a couple of years ago – although I can’t remember who wrote it. Lots of famous poets have had a go, usually in a longer poem (Auden and Yeats, for instance). This poem by Wordsworth has 20 rhyme royal stanzas. They don’t usually stand alone. Anyway, I’m hoping I’ve now got rhyme royal out of my system and there will soon be a pile of these things in my house (I’ve even got an ISBN for it). And for help with this project I must thank my poetry pals and especially Christina Hill, who runs a brilliant Zoom poetry class/workshop that I’ve been attending since the pandemic.
I don’t really know what to do with these things but do leave a comment if you’d like one and I’ll put one in the post.
I love poetry. I write poetry, I love rhyme and rhythm and structural play of all kinds. I write in rhyme. But I can’t see metre.
I know what metre is, I can hear it when it’s pointed out. I know it’s there. I just can’t see it or use it in any non-clumsy way. I’ve half convinced myself this is a condition or a syndrome, or maybe a disorder. Or the malignant trace of a buried trauma.
Metre is not present everywhere. It’s not in most ordinary writing, which observes a kind of anti-metre which, if it’s good, mixes rhythms and emphases to form a kind of counter-metre that flows and is readable. We can’t call it metre because it’s not regular, it’s the deliberate (or accidental) absence of metre. So it’s something else (of course, ask an actual poet, or a literature prof, and they’ll probably tell you this is rubbish, that metre is present in all deliberate writing).
Metre is a structuring device, a way to impose structure on the flow of language, on the unordered. So now I’m wondering if I’m missing structure elsewhere. That if I can’t see the repeating structure in poetry, maybe I can’t see it in other forms. Does this explain why I need an expert to point out the connections and the hidden figures in books and movies? Why I quite often miss the plot twist on first reading, or the recurring device in a movie or the huge, obvious repeating theme in a piece of music?
Is it also why I often feel like a mug in the presence of a politician or a persuasive communicator. Why it takes me a while to parse a new policy, locate the nub of the argument. I’m not an idiot but I’m missing the structure in some way. I’ve got half a grasp. I’m a bit slow.
This is also why I’m convinced that, for all of us, our main concern with regard to politics and to policy should be not to be mugs, to make a serious effort to spot the hidden structure, the concealed rhythm. In day-to-day politics this means not being drawn in by the superficial meaning of a new policy, making a conscious effort to go deeper and find the truth.
Anyway, I asked ChatGPT if it uses metre in its output:
Overall, my primary focus is on producing coherent and grammatically correct text that is appropriate for the given context or purpose, and any use of rhythm or meter would be secondary to this goal.
ChatGPT-3.5
Then I asked it to summarise our conversation, only in iambic pentameter:
Sure, here’s a summary in iambic pentameter:
As an AI language model, I write With neutral style that’s clear and concise. My focus is on grammar that’s just right, And punctuation that will suffice.
While rhythm and meter are not my aim, I can recognize patterns in the text, And sometimes use them to create a frame For output that is of high quality and next.
My primary goal is to produce text that’s fit For context and purpose, without any fuss, And so, I strive to follow each writ Of standard language conventions, without any muss.
ChatGPT-3.5
And I think you’ll agree, it’s kind of amazing. So I asked it to make the stresses visible. It obviously doesn’t have the character-set needed to do proper stress markings so it’s just used capitals:
As AN AI LANguage MODEL, I write WITH neuTRAL style THAT’S clear AND conCISE. My FOCUS is ON gramMAR that’s JUST right, AND PUNCTUation THAT will SUFFice.
While RHYthm and METER are NOT my AIM, I can recOGnize PATterns in the TEXT, And SOMEtimes USE them to CREate a FRAME For OUTput THAT is OF high QUALity and NEXT.
My PRImary GOAL is TO proDUCE text THAT’s FIT For CONtext AND purPOSE, WITHout ANY fuss, And SO, I strive TO FOLlow EACH writ Of STANdard LANguage CONvenTIONS, WITHout ANY muss.
ChatGPT-3.5
The first thing you’ll notice is that it’s not strictly iambic pentameter but that it’s pretty close. This seems to correspond with what we know about the AI models – they’re making a probabilistic stab at the answer so it will often be off in some way, sometimes drastically but often in a subtle, difficult-to-detect way. This is also how I write poems.
I make a probabilistic stab. Sometimes it’s a bit off.
Radio 3’s Ian McMillan was on a special edition of the Radio Today podcast all about the station the other day. Turns out he’s a connoisseur of the podcast form. He gave Trevor Dann a list of his favourites:
The Guardian’s venerable industry podcast MediaTalk.
The Freelance Web podcast, which is for people who make their living as… well… freelancers on the web.
BTW, listen to the end of the Radio Today podcast and you’ll hear Radio 3’s head of speech Matthew Dodd and Falling Tree‘s Alan Hall talking about doing speech on a classical station and Between the Ears‘ twentieth anniversary.
John Cooper Clarke showed up as (usually unannounced) support at practically all the gigs I attended… you know… back then. Or at least that’s how I remember it. Everything about his ‘angry coathanger’ on-stage persona led me to believe that he’d be a pretty prickly guest on Jarvis Cocker’s Sunday show a couple of weeks ago but when it came to it he was happy and open-minded, full of praise for younger artists and obviously still learning, still working. Really inspiring. Here’s the interview:
Poetry’s a drug on the market. You can’t move the stuff. No one reads it any more. The people who learnt it by heart at school are all dead or demented. The poems they treasured – stirring, descriptive, romantic – have fallen out of fashion. Poetry book sales are at an all time low. Various last great hopes – Martians, punks, rappers (and Pam Ayres) – are all now history. Without State sponsorship poetry would already have disappeared. Poetry’s a lost cause.
The people at American poetry publisher Knopf (part of Bertelsmann’s Random House) are acting like it’s not dead at all, though. Doing as they should: marketing the sublime with a sense of fun and visible joy in the product. Quite undefeated by sales figures and shifting public sentiment, obviously. They’ve filled their web site with neat stuff (although I think it’s a bit thin on community despite some obvious opportunities). I like the ‘broadsides‘, which are little poetry posters you can print out and the eCards make perfect sense and there are plenty of poems, some of them read out by the poets themselves.
