GCSE Poetry LIVE!

Word of the day: Qualitative.

We’re sitting in the middle, sandwiched between the two main places of unrest.  A no-man’s land of Poetry Live!  And like all good soldiers, we ventured forth into battle, straining to see, to hear through the mists of foggy clouds of noxious gases and crisp packets. 

Armed with booklets and anthologies, we ventured forth, pens poised, bayonets sharpened, and eyes on the stage.  There was the fear that Gillian Clarke would bore us into submission, sending us reeling back into the rustle of crisp packets, but she held us captivated.  I glanced at the students on my left, their faces glued to the stage as if to “that old rope”, coerced quietly into concentration.  Brows furrowed as the precise, warming voice filled the room, clouding the rustles behind us.  Even references to the Irish Question, 1916, 1998, the IRA were scribbled furiously on our brains.

Intervals left us wanting more, rudely interrupted by the presence of the chief examiner, our students taking their seats readily, eagerly, hungrily.  Carol Ann Duffy captivated us further, her down-to-earth gritty realism, reference to reality and precise explanations left us scribbling furiously on pages, arms, legs, minds.  An updated Salome entertained students in a way that no classroom reading can ever do, striving to capture what poetry was initially about: the naked spoken word.  The spoken work overtook the written in an attempt to flood our senses with the power of language, attempting to erase the ingrained notion that poetry should be read and not heard.  Hearing Duffy’s poetry for the first time, many of our students were pleasantly surprised by the humour, irony, straight-forwardness of her poems.  Stripped bare of the classroom setting, students were illicitly exposed to poetry the way it should be experienced.  Most were untainted by the “death” caused by excessive scrutiny and therefore bathed in the language of the poems without worrying about exams and meaning-making.  Just plain, unadulterated naked poetry.

Duffy left amongst cheers and wolf whistles as Simon Armitage ascended.  Our students cast sidelong glances, wondering what the cheering was about for this plain-looking, West Yorkshireman, striding purposefully towards the microphone.  Amid howling laughter and claps, he recited a warm-up poem about an obscure place practising witchcraft, painting their genitals blue and orange.  After this, there was no going back, we were hooked, obsessive fans, drawn to our own “Anchor.” Those who were hearing for the first time, the poet’s stories about his personal life, his poetry, his art, breathed his every breath, waited, mesmerised for a little more.  He wowed us for what seemed like five minutes before leaving amidst cheers, catcalls and wolf whistles. 

Advice from the chief examiner rudely interrupted us again, despite its usefulness, we wanted more poetry.  Grace Nichols was next on the menu.  Armed with accent, poetry that we did not have in print and an amazing knack for rhythm, Creole was brought to life for the first time for our students.  Amongst the rise of noxious gases from other schools, our students seemed captivated by the sights, sounds and smells evoked by Grace Nichols, recreating the Caribbean in the bright lights of Newcastle. 

Imtiaz Dharker closely followed with stories of the Indian Subcontinent, some of which were not conducive to the image of Pakistan.  Her hatred of an Islamic faith seemed to scream out at me from the poem so divisively named “Honour Killing”.  So much for artists and writers trying to break down the misconceptions about the Indian Subcontinent, creating new frontiers and a celebration of a culture.  Nevertheless, she was a performer; playing expertly to the crowd who cheered during the delightful performance of “She must be from another Country”.   Race relations, we salute you.

The much anticipated, much-celebrated poet and performer really brought down the roof with wild performances of many of his poems; poems we did not have in front of us, naked and unashamed, exposed language slicing through the rustles, his shouts drowning out anything and everything.  Funny, passionate and completely committed, Agard held the audience, cradled closely to his chest, like children, sending out messages of hope for the young, a multicultural approach to poetry, life and words, which hopefully did not fall on deaf ears.  A half-caste tongue in a half-caste head, convoluted notions of race, division and caste thrown aside in a symbolic gesture: the trademark, “standing on one leg”.  Raising the roof whilst simultaneously bringing the house down, Agard left our young people with notions of language as “sexy and erotic”.  In his own words, all the poets had proved to us, “language can really turn you on!”