Odds and Ends Essays, Blogs, Internet Discussions, Interviews and Miscellany

This language serves as an example of why the evidence for the prosecution is so unconvincing. Side
takes the very poetic qualities in Heaney’s word play, and attempts to hold them up to a super-rational
light of linguistic inquiry which displays none of the inventiveness and originality he seems to be
arguing for.
You do not address the cogency or otherwise of the quote, but the manner in which it is written. You confuse the
language of academic register with that of poetry. Perhaps this distinction should have been mentioned to you at
some point in your poetic journey.
Finally, I have to take issue with you when you say: ‘what struck me about Side’s rant, is the earnest, serious, selfrighteous
po-facedness of it all’, because it is you who seems to have an elevated sense of your own importance
regarding poetry. Here are some extracts about yourself from your blog:
‘This site you are now reading was kept by me for 8 months as a means to explore and bring to the
surface the various disparate voices in my head; part of the process called finding your voice. It is the
place I left the lyric poetry I wrote. The other sites linked to this blog (click view my complete profile on
your immediate right) house the other styles of writing. Scalljah is comedy, Desmond Swords-Poetics
started out as a place to put my avant-garde poems, and after a while developed into a place for
experimental prose, and As/Is is a collaborative blog I still post on and is where I honed my
L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poetry skills under the silent tutelage of the conveyer belt of Post Modern verse,
Sheila E Murphy, who is a natural and very generous poet’.
‘I trained for 3 years at writing school in my home town of Ormskirk on the West coast of the UK, (BA
Hons Writing Studies and Drama) before decamping to Dublin to chase the dream of becoming a poet,
which seems to be what has happened’.
‘What I wrote on 14/11/06 was just another piece of writing on my journey to self confirmation as a
poet’.
‘I write in all genres of poetry and prose, which is why it’s taken a few years for the voice to come
through’.
‘Lots of people calling themselves poets but only very few actually are’.
‘I didn’t know if my dream of wanting to be a poet was me fooling myself or if the spark of intuition
that set it off was based in something real, so I decided to cover my backside by learning to write in all
poetical forms, from strict meter to cutting edge avant-garde and slam; and to centre my practice in
memorisation, just like the Irish Fili, or “bards” who were in existence for about 2000 years up until
Cromwell came to Ireland at the start of 17C and this ancient tradition collapsed’.
You then go on to include a very poor poem that you have written called ‘Ormskirk’ that begins like this:
I grew up in the womb of West Lancs, where
skinheads dwelt in bushes by train tracks and
cut childrens’ heads off if ever they dared
go under the tunnel after the last
light had sunk signalling it was time to
come home. Playtime finished at sunset when
I was seven, and in the darkness spooks
ghosts, ghouls or Father Christmas could descend
into the night depending on what time
of year it was.
Now who is it, I wonder, who sounds self-righteous, earnest and po-faced?
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