THE KIDS ARE ALRIGHT

I sat down to watch the recently released biopic of Bob Dylan this week; ‘A Complete Unknown’. I am just too young to remember prime Dylan and although I did catch a live show once in New Jersey, I felt the crowd competed with the maestro as to who was the most bored.

Regardless of your thoughts on Dylan, there is no doubt that, above all else, he is a poet.

"Come mothers and fathers throughout the land, and don’t criticize what you can’t understand."

This could very well be the war cry of teenagers of any generation – including those in the current age of technology and artificial intelligence.

And I feel that this is the thing with poetry – at school we got World War I, Shakespeare, Browning. I am not throwing these guys any shade. I was brought up with ‘Dulce Et Decorum Est’ and remember my Mum getting emotional as she read it out to me and wailing that ‘they were only children’. I also remember being laughed at for being the geek at school when I already knew all the poems. So, there’s that.

But when did you hear a teenager get excited about ‘Shall I compare you to a summer’s day……’?

You didn’t.

But ask kids about their music, their video games, their comics and you’ll never shut them up. And THAT’S where we find their poetry. Once they start talking about the lyrics of Yungblud "If they break you into pieces, there’s always superglue." You will find out how empowering these words are to a young mind. Whether you like it or not, it’s poetry.

Or if they are playing Fallout 3 on the Playstation and they love the bit where the robot quotes some words in a post-apocalyptic world….haunting and bleak. They don’t even realise it is ‘There will Come Soft Rains’ by Sara Teasdale – they don’t even realise it’s poetry.

I don’t think poetry needs to be fancy words and old references. Poetry doesn’t even need to be that good. It just has to find the gap in the heart. And then - it just needs to strike.

Poetry is cool and it is a tragedy that it is cast aside by so many. It could do with a

makeover – a rebrand. Open discussions lead to open minds – chucking ‘The Tempest’ at kids is just not working. We need a world of poetry that embraces, challenges and celebrates anything and everything.

Bob Dylan felt he could change the world with his poetry – there must be new Dylans out there who can bring their world into prose and therefore into discussions and start opening minds.

And if I wish hard enough I can believe that the times are indeed a changin’.

I should be so lucky. (lucky, lucky, lucky).