Mothers, Aunties, and the Accessible Poem

"I felt we were always in the position of having to defend ourselves. We got cheesed off at being referred to as small-town Mantovanis, or the pop brigade. I suppose because we didn't do English at university, or because the poetry I was writing could be appreciated by my mother or my aunties. " (Roger McGough, in an interview by James Campbell in The Guardian, Saturday 22 August 2009)

This is a remarkable idea: accessibility as a synonym for less-than-literary.

Here's a sample of McGough's work:

The Identification by Roger McGough

So you think its Stephen?
Then I'd best make sure
Be on the safe side as it were.
Ah, there's been a mistake. The hair
you see, its black, now Stephens fair ...
Whats that? The explosion?
Of course, burnt black. Silly of me.
I should have known.
Then lets get on.

The face, is that the face mask?
that mask of charred wood
blistered scarred could
that have been a child's face?
The sweater, where intact, looks
in fact all too familiar.
But one must be sure.

The scoutbelt. Yes thats his.
I recognise the studs he hammered in
not a week ago. At the age
when boys get clothes-conscious
now you know. Its almost
certainly Stephen. But one must
be sure. Remove all trace of doubt.
Pull out every splinter of hope.

Pockets. Empty the pockets.
Handkerchief? Could be any schoolboy's.
Dirty enough. Cigarettes?
Oh this can't be Stephen.
I dont allow him to smoke you see.
He wouldn't disobey me. Not his father.
But that's his penknife. Thats his alright.
And thats his key on the keyring
Gran gave him just the other night.
Then this must be him.

I think I know what happened
... ... ... about the cigarettes
No doubt he was minding them
for one of the older boys.
Yes thats it.
Thats him.
Thats our Stephen.


This poem has a certain voice, of course, that will please some ears and not others. That's a matter of preference, not quality.

But from a literary standpoint, within this poem are forms and rhymes and cross-rhymes, concrete simplicity that carries grave weight, a palpable movement, a top layer of immediate accessibility, and beneath all that, layers left to be unpacked and studied by those who wish to do so. It deals with important and wrenching human experience. All of this exists within an elegantly simple, accessible poem that our "mothers and aunties" could understand on Main Street while on University Avenue literary critics delved into its structure and syntax.

We posit that building a poem that turns on so many layers requires a very high level of craftmanship, harder and deeper than the superficiality associated with the label "popular."

We would love to see poetry become "popular," and skillfully so.