what about your voice?

I'm thinking now that poetry is more an oral art - a tradition, if you like. Sure, we write it down and it gets copied out, but for convenience and because that's what literate societies do. I'm thinking that a poem must be written with a voice, preferably the poet's own!

This may seem like a statement of the bleeding obvious but let me tell you I think this is where I've gone wrong!

Firstly, seeing poems laid out can appear as flat as the paper they're written on. Hearing them read out gives them an unexpected liveliness. Is this the music that Clive James was on about?

Secondly, when composing a verse I've been concerned that it appears to look like a poem on the page and not just a paragraph of flowery prose, cut up in pleasing lengths and stacked one upon the other - maybe with a few rhymes and alliteration. I've not paid any attention to my own voice! It's someone else's voice - or no one else's voice, which must be worse.

I have to discover my voice - like Hegley, Zephaniah, and Plath...

...or Neruda. See, even if I was Pablo Neruda's equal, I shouldn't try to speak with his voice. It would be silly, I'd feel self-conscious and it wouldn't sound pretty at all.



The Queen

I have named you queen.
There are taller than you, taller.
There are purer than you, purer.
There are lovelier than you, lovelier.
But you are the queen.

When you go through the streets
No one recognizes you.
No one sees your crystal crown, no one looks
At the carpet of red gold
That you tread as you pass,
The nonexistent carpet.

And when you appear
All the rivers sound
In my body, bells
Shake the sky,
And a hymn fills the world.

Only you and I,
Only you and I, my love,
Listen to me.

Pablo Neruda