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Underground > Books, Criticism & Writing >

Yo! Celebrate Prince William's 21st with the Poet Laureate!

12:26 / 21.06.03

Rap poem marks William's 21st

Better stand back
Here's an age attack,
But the second in line
Is dealing with it fine.

It's a threshold, a gateway,
A landmark birthday;
It's a turning of the page,
A coming of age.

It's a day to celebrate,
A destiny, a fate;
It's a taking to the wing,
A future thing.

Better stand back
Here's an age attack,
But the second in line
Is dealing with it fine.

It's a sign of what's to come,
A start, and then some;
It's a difference growing,
A younger sort of knowing.

It's a childhood gone,
A step towards the crown;
It's a trigger of change,
A stretching of the range.

Better stand back
Here's an age attack,
But the second in line
Is dealing with it fine.

The country is immensely fortunate that Mr Motion decided to blow off a multi-million dollar hip hop career to become Poet Laureate.

12:35 / 21.06.03

I second that. A Motion.

The Return Of Rothkoid

14:13 / 21.06.03

That's worse than that album grandpa released!

16:56 / 21.06.03

Prince Philip released an album? Songs from his homeland perhaps, with a bouzouki band? Demis Roussos and Nana Mouskouri covers? I'd buy it. Could do that manly, arms-linked-together sideways dancing to it.

Would be better than Motion's crap poem.

18:51 / 21.06.03

Oh lordy! I read these dire musings at tea-time and was going to start this thread but you beat me to it. I was going to entitle the thread "Show me A Motion - LaLaLaLa", did anyone read the other one? Brace yerselves:

Is twenty-one the threshold any more?
Why not eighteen? Whatever. Most of us
Can choose which line we draw between the past
And future; we can call our lives our own.

But you're not 'most of us'. You cannot tear
Yourself from your inheritance, or pass
Unnoticed to find out what suits you best.
You stand apart but never stand alone.

That's what our 'happy birthday' means today:
A wish that you'll be free to claim your life
While destiny connects with who you are -
A Prince and yet familiar common clay;
Your father's heir but true to your own faith;
A mother's son and silvered by her star.

Mr Motion said the form of the poem with its A and B sides was inspired by vinyl LPs and 45s.

Urh. Urh. Urh. Forforkssake!!!! And this is the Poet Laureate??? This is truly toxic. And vile. And I'm speechless. Urrrrrgggggghhhh - fetch the vomit bowl.

19:34 / 21.06.03

Right, I've got a spade, who here has a strong back?. Let's dig up dear ol' Johnnie Betjeman right now!!!
btw. Did he ever write any Royal pomes?

20:10 / 21.06.03

If we ask nicely can we have Ted Hughes back please?

ONLY NICE THINGS

20:15 / 21.06.03

Dude, you're welcome to him. Craggy-face Ken Loach Kestrel for a wife-killer....

Motion's intentions seem good - to explore the role of the Laureate, to work out the relationship of the Laureate to the state and to write poems for events that will get into the newspapers. It's just a shame they're so bloody awful.

Brigade du jour

20:30 / 21.06.03

Christ, isn't it fuckin awful? I found it in the paper last night, read it out to everyone in an amusing posh voice, yet after a verse or two I found it all really quite disturbing, and not really funny any more.

I would think it was a piss-take except you get a sense that it's genuine far too often.

Andrew Motion, what a cunt you are.

20:34 / 21.06.03

That's an interesting interpretation of how he sees his role, Haus. I hadn't really seen it in that way before. Maybe a collaborative venture would be more valid for a 21st century Poet Laureate role? Benjamin Zephaniah to write the rap, for instance? And I have a friend in Finsbury Park who's quite a well-respected poet - perhaps he could join in too. Is the concept of Poet Laureate outmoded in fact? Does anyone know why A Motion was chosen for the position?

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

23:57 / 21.06.03

Maybe the Queen just doesn't know a fucking thing about poetry? Maybe the royals in general don't (the good old' Queen Mum, gawd rest 'er evil soul, famously described TS Eliot as "a funny little man... who read me a poem about a desert or something") and just got lucky with Hughes and Betjeman?

00:58 / 22.06.03

Maybe Motion's onto a good thing and we're all out of touch?

Nah.

01:16 / 22.06.03

I think it's something he really should have kept to his blog.

I bet he writes bad fanfic as well.

04:19 / 22.06.03

I liked his anti-war poem.

m.

Whisky Priestess

20:52 / 22.06.03

I do hope you're joking. Could somebody please do a google and post a poem of Motion's that is actually any fucking good at all? Maybe even just one line, one phrase? To restore my faith in humanity? Please?

I'd do it myself but it's a fool's errand. ARG! KILL HIM!

PS The reason Motion got the job was that he was the only poet suggested who was sad enough to want it. True.

03:06 / 23.06.03

I wasn't joking. I really like this poem. Thought it nicely brave of a poet laureate to do such a thing, too.

Here 'tis:

CAUSA BELLI by Andrew Motion

They read good books, and quote, but never learn
a language other than the scream of rocket-burn.
Our straighter talk is drowned but ironclad:
elections, money, empire, oil and Dad.

It's nice. simple. powerful, i thought.

m.

07:39 / 23.06.03

Dear fucking LORD. That is just...oh, dear. Oh dear.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

10:33 / 23.06.03

Sorry matsya... I have to agree with Cholister and Whisky... personally, I think it's awful. (Although it was kind of nice for a Poet Laureate to express the sentiment, I'll grant you that...)

Apart from anything else, his pentameters are for shit! (As far as I remember, the rest of the poem scans, other than the second line of the segment you quoted. I could be wrong, though.)

Ummm... why do we have a Poet Laureate anyway? We have a population who couldn't give two fucks for poetry, a monarchy who ALSO couldn't give two fucks for poetry, a whole load of poets who receive no recognition whatsoever... doesn't this seem a bit fucked to anyone?

I could see Zephaniah as Poet Laureate, though... that'd fuck Prince Philip off no end... which is always funny.

Or Ivor Cutler. Ivor Cutler'd be cool.

I say- abandon the post of Poet Laureate.

Bring back the court jester!!!

10:51 / 23.06.03

Well, given the Queen's own poetry attempts, I suspect she quite likes Motion...

This is apparently all her own work:

Although we must leave you,
Fair Castle of Mey,
We shall never forget,
Nor could ever repay,
A meal of such splendor,
Repast of such zest,
It will take us to Sunday,
Just to digest.
To leafy Balmoral,
We are now on our way.
But our hearts will remain
At the Castle of Mey.
With your gardens and ranges,
And all your good cheer,
We will be back again soon
So roll on next year.

HM Queen

Now you know what she does all day other than try on hats.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

11:04 / 23.06.03

Anyone any good at raising the dead? McGonagall (sp?) would make a WICKED PL! (sorry... it was the word "Balmoral" in HRH's poem that reminded me of the classic couplet "Gaily through the Highland floral/To the castle of Balmoral").

Whisky Priestess

15:46 / 23.06.03

Sorry to inflict this on those of a sensitive disposition again, but:

CAUSA BELLI by Andrew Motion

They read good books, and quote, but never learn
a language other than the scream of rocket-burn.
Our straighter talk is drowned but ironclad:
elections, money, empire, oil and Dad.

Matsya, sorry to continue to disagree, but this is nothing but trite, lazy doggerel. It doesn't even scan, for Christ's sake! Motion doesn't want to risk free verse because he's a lowest-common-denom - I'm sorry, populist, and everyone knows that it's not poetry if it doesn't rhyme, but having done that he can't even be bothered to add rhythm to the rhyme.

Plus it is not at all brave of Motion to express anti-American, sorry, anti-war sentiments in his sinecure of Poet Laureate - in fact, it would have been braver of him to support the war as then he would have had the liberal left (his peers) down on him like a pack of ravening wolves.

Nice. Yes, Motion's poetry is nice, in the same way that flying ducks and pictures of dogs playing poker and amateur watercolours and lawn bowls and Rich Tea biscuits are nice, but without any of the intrinsic or kitsch value of any of the above.

Simple it is too, although it tries for lofty phrasing and succeeds only in achieving meaningless mixed metaphors "drowned but ironclad"

Powerful. Is it the sentiment or the way it is expressed that is powerful? Granted, an anti-war sentiment can be a powerful one, but not when it is the prevailing doctrine of the intellectual group to which you belong. Then it's merely conventional. And if this poem is a powerful way to express a conventional sentiment, I will eat my hat. There is more poetry in (for example) Simon Armitage or Carol Ann Duffy's bank statements than in the whole of Motion's dreary, witless, appalingly banal oeuvre. The man redefines mediocre.

I'm sorry. Motion's talentlessness is a bit of a sore point. It's best if people don't get me started. He has clearly never listened to rap by anyone other than Will Smith in his life, too.

Tryphena Absent

15:53 / 23.06.03

That's a terrible slight on rich tea biscuits.

17:15 / 23.06.03

and Will Smith

ONLY NICE THINGS

19:56 / 23.06.03

I don't rate motion at all, but two corrections:

Apart from anything else, his pentameters are for shit! (As far as I remember, the rest of the poem scans, other than the second line of the segment you quoted. I could be wrong, though.)

It's a scazon, I think. Rare, and rarer yet in pentameter, but it exists.

Simple it is too, although it tries for lofty phrasing and succeeds only in achieving meaningless mixed metaphors "drowned but ironclad"

That isn't a mixed metaphor, surely? Ironclads are a type of ship, ships can be sunk, and thus drowned.

He does suck, though. Armitage would have been a far better appointment, and has done more for public poetry than anyone else I can think of, except possibly Wendy Cope or Ian McMillan, neither of whom were likely to get it. Duffy would also have been a genuinely brave choice, after Hughes (a duffer, basically, and as heteronormative as they come).

Failign that, somebody old and close to death would have worked well - a decent turnover is always good in these matters. New York elects one a year, I think, which seems a little hasty, but rotation every five years to account for fluctuations in form (Wordsworth's idleness, Hughes defying the odds by getting even shitter, Southey's basic ineptitude) might work nicely...

00:12 / 24.06.03

I dunno, I went and looked at some of his other poems for the QM's dead day and 100th lifeday and other things, and I think he's sweet. Really, really daggy, but rather sweet.

anyone got a copy of his wedding poem for Andrew and Sophie?

and that wasn't a segment of the poem. that was the whole lot.

don't get me wrong, I'm not saying he's my favourite poet or anything. thumbs up to armitage from me.

m.

Whisky Priestess

08:13 / 24.06.03

"That isn't a mixed metaphor, surely? Ironclads are a type of ship, ships can be sunk, and thus drowned."

Oh poo. Can't sneak anything past you, can I? I had no idea an ironclad was a ship though, in my (or perhaps Motion's) defence. Hmm "Our straighter talk is drowned but ironclad" ... it's just wrong but it's hard to pin down exactly how (that's poetry for ya). It may not be a mixed metaphor but it is a poor set of images, illuminating nothing. How does one ironclad speech? What does it mean? What's he trying to day in this line? I know poetry doesn't have to be crystal clear but it does help if there's at least some meaning in a line, rather than a series of empty phrases signifying nothing.

And I don't buy your defence of the second line's scansion. Whether it's a scazon or not, it upsets the poem's established rhythm yet because the poem is so short, it fails to establish another, larger pattern within the verse. So while, technically, it may be correct, in this poem it does not perform any useful function.

Plus I don't believe Motion is half so clever as Haus or would have been able to think of the scazon defence on his own. If it looks like a fuck-up and quacks like a fuck-up, chances are (esp. with Andrew M.) that a fuck-up is exactly what it is.

08:42 / 24.06.03

The thing is, what good is an ironclad if it has been sunk? It might not be a mixed metaphor, but it doesn't really help his cause very much... unless he's saying that 'our straighter talk' has been blown to smithereens by the depth charge of coalition rhetoric; but then again if that's the case, it's not much good to anyone, is it? Sanctimonious prat.

09:13 / 24.06.03

I really wish I hadn't looked at this thread now.

"Better stand back
Here's an age attack"

I know I'm really not adding anything to the thread by saying this, but fucking hell..

09:50 / 24.06.03

If Motion's so interested in 'exploring the role' of the laureate - why do all his royal poems just turn out to be the same pile of horrible arselick?

Regrettable Juvenilia

10:51 / 24.06.03

I think the biggest problem with "our straighter talk is drowned but ironclad" is that it lumps together a) a boast that Motion and whoever he imagines his 'side' to be are straight talkers, no-nonsense, just the facts etc, with b) a really ugly and kinda obscure metaphor. This is as good an example as any of how his clumsy attempts at populism clash with his clumsy grasp of, ahem, 'poetics'. (To move for a moment onto the birthday rap, Whisky's dead-on on the Will Smith thing - I cannot help but suspect that Motion thinks he's had a pretty good stab at paying homage to that shouty pointy-hand music that the young uns listen to, while at the same time slyly mocking it for those who know better, wink wink, and also saying something incisive about Prince William - dear Christ.)

Also, fuck's sake, I know he's aiming for brevity, blunt simplicity and so on, but that last line does a real disservice to the many anti-war arguments/standpoints/cases that could and can be made. It's exactly the kind of learned-by-rote, slogan-ish list of buzzwords that the anti-war movement were/are constantly accused of. What makes this even more disturbing is the way the first line inadvertently suggests that Motion is mocking the pro-war camp for their fancy book-learnin' - as if there weren't a wealth of texts available and in fact cited by better commentators than himself in making the case against war, and as if a relative absence of research of any kind on the subject you want to argue about were ever something to be proud of...

In other words, he's not someone I'd want 'on my side' in any debate.

(By the way, I'm going to nominate that this thread be moved to Books, if no-one minds.)