Poem for Imbolc: introductory thoughts on the power of poetry

The online bloggers’ celebration known as The Bloggers’ (Silent) Poetry Reading for Imbolc has been running for five years now, to surprisingly little fanfare or publicity but thoroughly enjoyed by all those who take part whose numbers increase year on year as word, quite literally, spreads. I’ve taken part most years, the idea being that you publish either one of your own poems or a favourite poem by someone else to your blog in honour of the goddess Brigid (or Brigit, or Bride) to whom this ancient Celtic festival is traditionally dedicated.

It isn’t often said but if you’re going to republish someone else’s work then you really should obtain permission from the poet first, assuming the piece is still covered by copyright law. Of course many poems fall outside of copyright law because we probably began speaking poems back when we were painting on cave walls or not very long after, and have been writing poems down throughout human history.

The druids held poets and poetry in high esteem; indeed, one class of druid—the bard—was almost entirely devoted to the crafting and performance of poetry. Bards were said to have the power in verse to make kings successful and to curse their enemies. You certainly didn’t want to get on the wrong side of a poet. Bards would issue forth prophetic poems of incredible complexity in rhyme and meter prior to battle, predicting the outcome. It isn’t recorded what happened when and if bards got it wrong, if anything happened to them at all, but poetry probably had its powerful mystical associations long before the druids first came along.

Modern mechanical and consumerist societies have little time for poetry (although it sneaks in occasionally via pop music lyrics) but people around the world can and do still testify to the power of poems to work magic within their souls, to engage, enrage, provoke thought and action, induce calm and distill ideas. A poem can address situations global and personal, it can focus on the internal or external worlds, it can advise or chastise you without ever mentioning your name.

It isn’t the fact that poems are still liked that interests me most; it’s the still-extant ability of the poem to powerfully inform and instruct, to attack and wound without the use of guns or knives or bombs. That’s an easy statement to misinterpret, so I must explain. I don’t mean I’m into negativity, far from it, but I am fascinated not by the poem’s ability to comfort, console and elevate—although these things are all good—but it’s in their ability to provoke change, to bring forth uncomfortable truths in the hope of passing on wisdom and knowledge, that I find the greatest echo of their former standing within our ancient societies. If you’re a poet and have never offended anyone with your work, what kind of poet are you?

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If anything, the kind of poems that appear on Hallmark birthday cards might be seen not only as hugely sentimental but downright offensive and blasphemous to our ancestral forebears. If you know anything of poetry, perhaps you’ll understand me when I say I have all the time in the world for the sharply incisive and often poisonous verses of Sylvia Plath but very little time at all for the more Establishment-friendly work of former Poet Laureate Andrew Motion. Alongside Plath my other two favourite poets were my teachers for two years when I studied for my MA in Creative Writing at Manchester Metropolitan University: Carol Ann Duffy, who despite being the current Poet Laureate is decidedly anti-authoritarian and subversive, and whose explorations of the joys and pains of love in particular are simply brilliant and beautiful—and Simon Armitage, whose ability to effectively and movingly present us with landscapes in text reminds, just a shade, of the late Ted Hughes (both Yorkshiremen, as it happens).

I will shortly be posting my own poem for this year in honour of Brigid, and Imbolc. Watch out for it. For now, blessed be.

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• Philip Hensher on Carol Ann Duffy: ‘She’s not aiming for refinement, but for the thump of a drum’ (telegraph.co.uk)
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