{"id":862,"date":"2013-10-03T08:25:05","date_gmt":"2013-10-02T19:25:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/?p=862"},"modified":"2013-10-03T08:34:36","modified_gmt":"2013-10-02T19:34:36","slug":"speaking-to-your-readers-ear","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/?p=862","title":{"rendered":"Speaking to your reader\u2019s ear"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/?attachment_id=855\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-855\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignleft size-medium wp-image-855\" alt=\"ear2\" src=\"http:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/10\/ear2-300x280.jpg\" width=\"300\" height=\"280\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/10\/ear2-300x280.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/10\/ear2.jpg 549w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a>As a child, I had a rather low opinion of poetry.<\/p>\n<p>I realise now that, on the whole, the poetry that we were exposed to at school was largely of the dumpity dump variety. \u00a0Robert Browning\u2019s <i>How They Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix<\/i> is an example that sticks in my mind.<\/p>\n<p><em>I sprang to the stirrup, and Joris, and he; \/\u00a0I gallop\u2019d, Dirck gallop\u2019d, we gallop\u2019d all three;<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Dumpity dumpity dumpity dump, \/\u00a0Dumpity dumpity dumpity dump.<\/p>\n<p>It was OK.\u00a0 But it certainly didn\u2019t make me want to stand and cheer.<\/p>\n<p>And then I discovered the young Roger McGough (and his fellow \u2018Liverpool poets\u2019).\u00a0 And Robert Graves.\u00a0 And John Betjeman. \u00a0And TS Eliot.\u00a0 And William Carlos Williams.\u00a0 And Philip Larkin.\u00a0 And Kendrick Smithyman.\u00a0 And everything changed.<\/p>\n<p>Forget dumpity dump.\u00a0 These guys were writing clever, funny, sad, engaging stories, and they were making wry observations.\u00a0 But their writing was tight.\u00a0 In some cases, it was very tight.\u00a0 Their words were well chosen.\u00a0 Their images were vivid.\u00a0 And reading their poems reminded me of the rhythms of a great jazz solo.<\/p>\n<p><i>sometimes \/\u00a0<\/i><i>I feel like a priest \/\u00a0<\/i><i>in a fish and chip queue,\u00a0<\/i>Roger McGough said.<\/p>\n<p>And, Kendrick Smithyman began by saying of the Mangatawhiri Stream during the Maori Wars, that it was:\u00a0<i>Shabbier than a frontier ought to be,<\/i><\/p>\n<p>And that:\u00a0<i>this stream (one understands) could be crossed \/\u00a0<\/i><i>by a General getting on in years and not up to \/\u00a0<\/i><i>his job, stumping ahead with his walking stick \/\u00a0<\/i><i>to lance the nodes of ambush.<\/i><\/p>\n<p>Messrs McGough and Williams and Smithyman didn\u2019t make me suddenly want to become a poet.\u00a0 But they did make me think about the prose that I wrote in an entirely different way.\u00a0 I suddenly realised that, in addition to everything else, I had to write for my reader\u2019s ear.\u00a0 My prose not only had to <i>read<\/i> right, it also had to <i>sound<\/i> right.<\/p>\n<p>Thank you, guys.\u00a0 I owe you.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As a child, I had a rather low opinion of poetry. I realise now that, on the whole, the poetry that we were exposed to at school was largely of the dumpity dump variety. \u00a0Robert Browning\u2019s How They Brought the &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/?p=862\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3,6,4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/862"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=862"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/862\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":864,"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/862\/revisions\/864"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=862"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=862"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=862"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}