Verse

After being usurped by prose as the dominant literary form during the Victorian era, poetry made a similar journey to Jazz after the arrival of Rock ‘n’ Roll, continuing to flourish and innovate, but doing so with a much more select readership. Yet it remained a gateway to reading for the very young. Any child fortunate enough to be exposed to the magic of rhyme via the limerick and a master practitioner like Spike Milligan learns early on how effective verse can be in expressing a point in as few words as possible.

John Lennon’s two volumes of Lear-esque nonsense verse in the mid-60s underlined the connection between poetry and the new literate generation of pop stars. As an artist who always regarded himself as a poet rather than a pop star, Jim Morrison once observed that nobody can memorise and recite an entire novel in the way they can a poem or song lyric, and he recognised musicians from Dylan onwards were the true inheritors of a genre capable of impacting upon a mass audience.

Like Jim Morrison himself, Byron, Shelley and Keats all died young (Byron the eldest at just 36) and cemented the long-lasting image of the poet as doomed, tortured genius. They remain the blueprint for poetry’s appeal during adolescence, and their enduring shadows fell upon me in my teenage years, as they did numerous others.

Like many attracted by the ‘Rock Star’ qualities of the Romantics, I embraced their oeuvre. From adolescence up to the end of my 20s, I spent nigh-on two decades writing verse that was intended to be put to music to facilitate my Byronic intentions, though it rarely was. Eventually, I exhausted the form and myself, re-connecting with prose as an alternative option (one which had been the prime written medium of my childhood). I didn’t go near verse again until a personal tragedy unexpectedly reunited me with it, something that made me realise verse was a far more effective and immediate means of articulating specific emotions than spending six months slogging away on a novel.

In terms of influence, the generation of post-war poets whose reputations have courted as much controversy as lingering awe in recent decades subconsciously shaped my approach above all others, and verse to me now is interchangeable with prose. Anyone for whom ‘poetry’ remains a rude word should belatedly jettison their prejudices and see verse for what it is - an eternally versatile and flexible form of self-expression that can make the reader realise they’re not alone better than any other.