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There’s always a risk for poets in writing about current affairs. All too quickly, today’s burning issue becomes tomorrow’s chip paper, and all that hard work you put into knocking rhythm and rhyme together counts for nothing. And who wants that?
But there’s always been a role for broadside balladeering, and sometimes – when there’s an issue which has a direct impact on people but seems terminally dull when you try to explain it – a poem can make a point, and get read, where a column in a broadsheet can’t. It’s not an either/or. Both have their place. Yes, we need sober and detailed analysis, but why not engage people emotionally and make them laugh, too? Corporate tax avoidance gets my goat, but it was only when I managed to write a poem about it – no-one likes an angry poet imagined me visiting a tax-dodging coffee shop chain – that I found a way to articulate my anger, and that of others.
Currently, the BBC seem to be choosing to ignore a massive political story: Tory general election fraud in marginal constituencies. You can read the facts about that story here. You won’t hear much about it on the BBC, however, so I wrote this poem – shell-like – to try and bring the issue home.
If it ends up wrapping tomorrow’s cyber-chips, so be it. It was a lot of fun to do. And you should never discount the importance of fun.
