Regular IS&T contributor and stalwart of the West Midlands/Black Country poetry scene Geoff Stevens says he has “received a lot of emails recently from evangelical poetry bodies that are infiltrating our region in an attempt to convert us to London-style poetry shenanigans, underlining their superior skills in conciliatory tones” and that this has prompted him to write this poem…
SKETCH OF THE POET AS AN OLD LION
Always outside of the mane stream
he has no spots given to him
on the poetry circuits of the current establishment.
But he does not require life in its overgrown jungle of mediocrity
a metre cheetah churning out intrusive rhyme
an exponent of rap
a black panther hip-hopping in puma footwear
or one of those missing-it lynx
who fail to hit on at what the system does to poetry.
No cougar he
attempting to gobble-up
all the favours that could be granted to him
by various bodies (in the Arts)
but no tabby either
accepting the propaganda
of their just-so stories of how it should be done
like a feral cat slammed-up in an amphitheatre
of microphones and lynch mobs.
The lion may be old now
but he still has his pride.
