Testimony

An original poem on self-proclaimed poets

There are lots of different articles lined up for New Grub Street over the next while, but the tilt of our world these days is driving me to poetry, and this seems like a good place to share the pieces that are emerging, and that I’m continuing to work on.

The following poem takes as its background the trial of poet Josef Brodsky in the 1960s. You can read the transcript of those proceedings here, but the preoccupations of the poem are perennial and tragically relevant for this past week.

‘The woman who lost her life was a self-proclaimed poet from Colorado…’ – Jesse Watters

When they summoned Brodsky, the judge concerned
herself at first with posture (the way a
poet stands in the concrete world of judiciaries)
took into account the economy,
the need to fumigate society
of parasitic poetry, never
asking what a court is but a simile,
while outside, snow obscured the metaphors
of renamed theatres, the city itself
a cypher. Then, taking aim at the self-proclaimed:

Who has recognised you as a poet,
given you a place among the poets?

Brodsky - lyrical, unfettered: No one.
Who gave me a place among the human race?