{"id":936,"date":"2010-12-23T10:52:39","date_gmt":"2010-12-23T10:52:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ink.verticalplus.co.uk\/archive\/?p=936"},"modified":"2010-12-23T10:52:39","modified_gmt":"2010-12-23T10:52:39","slug":"geoff-stevens-says-im-not-a-metre-cheetah","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/geoff-stevens-says-im-not-a-metre-cheetah\/","title":{"rendered":"Geoff Stevens says I'm not a metre cheetah"},"content":{"rendered":"

Regular IS&T contributor and stalwart of the West Midlands\/Black Country poetry scene <\/span>Geoff Stevens<\/span> 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…<\/span>


SKETCH OF THE POET AS AN OLD LION<\/span>

Always outside of the mane stream<\/span>
he has no spots given to him<\/span>
on the poetry circuits of the current establishment.<\/span>
But he does not require life in its overgrown jungle of mediocrity<\/span>
a metre cheetah churning out intrusive rhyme<\/span>
an exponent of rap<\/span>
a black panther hip-hopping in puma footwear<\/span>
or one of those missing-it lynx<\/span>
who fail to hit on at what the system does to poetry.<\/span>
No cougar he<\/span>
attempting to gobble-up<\/span>
all the favours that could be granted to him<\/span>
by various bodies (in the Arts)<\/span>
but no tabby either<\/span>
accepting the propaganda<\/span>
of their just-so stories of how it should be done<\/span>
like a feral cat slammed-up in an amphitheatre<\/span>
of microphones and lynch mobs.<\/span>
The lion may be old now<\/span>
but he still has his pride.<\/span>

<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-936","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-prose-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/936","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=936"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/936\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=936"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=936"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=936"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}