Sunday, 20 June 2010

Lyrics in contemporary poetry

Bearing in mind the ever-growing aural presence of lyrics in our daily lives, it's worth noting that more and more poems make use of them.

My current favourites include Matt Merritt's terrific I'm Your Man (from his Happenstance pamphlet, Making The Most Of The Light) with its references to Leonard Cohen, plus Maura Dooley's The Spoils (from Kissing A Bone), in which she invokes the singers and songs on the records that are being divided up by a separating couple.

As for myself, I've even alluded to a cheesy Paul Young song in a poem that might well find its way into my pamphlet. Dangerous territory indeed!

1 comment:

  1. I do it the other way around, sort of, by writing poems that I later turn into lyrics.

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