Poetry, poetry, poetry. I love poetry. I like putting on a silly voice to impersonate T. S. Eliot whilst reciting ‘The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock’ and deepening my voice to imitate Dylan Thomas’ melodic reading of ‘Fern Hill’. That’s just how I spend my Friday nights. I particularly enjoy spoken word poetry and I remember the first time that I encountered it. I was in my A-Level English Literature class and, in preparation for the practical criticism section of our exam, my teacher asked us all to teach a lesson on a poem of our choice. A guy in my class called Ben brought in an intriguing poem called ‘A Letter from God to Man’ by the spoken word artist Scroobius Pip. Fireworks erupted in my head, creating little circles of dancing light and all my nerves were fizzling. I liked it a lot. I proceeded to search for this mysterious Pip figure on YouTube, watching his videos to much more crackling and sizzling throughout my body. From this, I found Kate Tempest. Watching her perform makes every hair stand on end, her passion, her masterful command of rhythm and the raw, gutsy subject matter of her poems makes me want to scream ‘YES!!!’ Poetry is beautiful. And this intense love was only to grow more and more passionate during my first year at Queen Mary.
One lecture that particularly stood out was that entitled ‘The Line’. This was one of the first lectures on the module and it was memorable because Katy Price made us rip up a poem and rearrange it to see how line structure and length can affect a reading of a poem, its meaning or its overall effect. It made me realise just how creative you can get when analysing poetry and the extent to which you can deconstruct it: nothing should be taken for granted. I found this particularly interesting, especially the emphasis on sound within poetry and how it should be read aloud in order to gain a better understanding of it. This, of course, had been taught at A-Level, but the teaching at Queen Mary made poetry seem much more accessible and dynamic. The use of videos and music to illustrate points about rhythm and sound were particularly useful (Peter Howarth also used the music video for ‘Girlfriend in a Coma’ by The Smiths to assist his explanation of irony, which was another highlight). The enthusiasm with which the lectures were delivered and the fresh and innovative way in which poetry was presented helped to nurture my passion for it and confirmed my undying love for it.
My personal highlight from the entire first year was the Poetry Performance week. When I first heard that in Week 8 we would have to do a ‘performance’ I was bricking it. I hate doing presentations and speaking in front of lots of people, so the thought of having to actually perform made my blood pressure sky high. Week 7 came. It was time to plan my performance. It had been explained that we didn’t actually have to do a performance in which we stood up in front of people and recited a poem, we could do anything creative that showed our interpretation of the poem, such as make a video or a voice recording of the poem. However, in a sleep-deprived moment of panic and utter madness I decided to perform ‘Daddy’ by Sylvia Plath. But I came to the conclusion that a simple performance was not enough. I decided to make awful collages which were supposed to represent certain key phrases or ideas within the poem and I intended them to look child-like to link with the poem’s theme (and to disguise the fact that I am really not artistic). Once I arrived at the seminar, most of my fear had disappeared. Everyone was really supportive of each other and there was such a fun, friendly atmosphere in the class that I actually really enjoyed it! It was interesting to see people’s interpretations of the poems we’d studied and I loved that it really helped to bring poetry to life. People have so many misconceptions about poetry: that it’s boring, pretentious and you’re forced to read it in stuffy classrooms whilst people talk at you and tell you what it’s about and how you’re supposed to interpret it. I found the course at Queen Mary very liberating. It was great to discuss ideas with like-minded people in seminars and the performance week was particularly freeing, allowing us to own our ideas and interpretations in a creative and fun way.
