Metrics are all around us

Whenever I notice poets or readers getting themselves worked up about metre, I'm reminded that it's actually dead simple and is often made to seem difficult by terminology. In fact, it's present in all our lives, in every sentence we utter, and then is ramped up, as a certain Mr Matt Hancock might have it, in songs, advertising slogans and poems, etc, etc... At times, the creator of metrical lines is perfectly aware of what they're doing, but at others they're just following their ear.

To show what I mean, I'd now like to offer up a few examples from a wide gamut of sources in order to demonstrate how metre reaches every crevice of language. We can easily get to grips with it if we just relax and listen...

Tell me what you want,
what you really, really want...had the Spice Girls serving up two lines of trochees.

All my troubles seemed so far away,
now it looks as if they're here to stay...saw The Beatles working in a similar vein.

Old McDonald had a farm
and on that farm he had a cow......is also a series of trochees (followed by iambs), which is why any translation into Spanish sounds so wonky.

There were three in the bed
and the little one said...is another nursery rhyme, but this time it's using anapests.

All the world's a stage
and all the men and women merely players... might be a classical example of trocheees and iambs...

They f*** you up, you Mum and Dad...on the other hand, was still using a similar beat in the 20th Century.

Let your fingers do the walking was an advertising slogan made up of trochees.

Totally tropical taste was another one that used dactyls.

These are just a few examples of the many that are around us. What are your favourite instances of metre being used in our everyday lives...?

Martyn Crucefix on metrics

So many emerging poets (and even a few workshop leaders) seem to think that metrics are an irrelevance when creating verse, as if we can break every single rule before learning any of them, as if almost all top-notch abstract artists weren't first excellent draughtsmen. As a consequence, it's been a real pleasure to read Martyn Crucefix's blog over the past week or so.

Crucefix has been doing some teaching for the Poetry School, concentrating on metrics, and has then written two terrific posts on the back of his sessions. You can read them here. Apart from being entertaining and accessible, they are backed up by a formal rigour and knowledge that can only help any poet to understand the nuts and bolts of how verse is constructed. Wholeheartedly recommended!