Poetry not so fabulous, says Joanna Lumley

In a curious tirade, former Booker Prize judge and full time icon Joanna Lumley tore a strip off of the state of poetry in Britain yesterday.

"When Joanna Lumley agreed to pen an introduction to a collection of poems, she probably thought she was simply doing a favour for an unknown poet in need of a publicity boost. Instead, the Absolutely Fabulous star has caused controversy by publishing views on modern poetry that have offended some of Britain's best-known writers.
Rather than limiting her comments to the book in question, Lumley attacked contemporary poetry, dismissing 'so much' of it as maddeningly obscure and, at worst, self-indulgent. At the other extreme, she argued that less demanding poetry risked becoming humdrum and commonplace."

Now Patsy, er.. Joanna, I love you but you're just wrong. The pleasures of poetry are a bit more subtle and so forth but I think she suffered from being force fed too much of the early moderns in grammar school and never got over it. Things are a bit different now.

I've never understood the idea that poetry is any harder to figure out than any other written form. There are a hell of a lot of novelists who could use words with more dispatch if some poetry was part of the mix. Secondly the idea the one needs a bunch of education to appreciate poetry is just silly.

You still rock though.

Posted by David