Has rhyme had its time?

Some of you browsing this may know that in the past year I've set up another blog known as What if I... dedicated solely to poetry. I did this after stumbling upon a notebook containing many of my poems from my MA writing course that I'd taken during my early 20s.

I suddenly had a burst of ideas for new poems. Why did that happen? At first I thought it was totally bizarre, largely because I hadn't written a poem in two decades, but I realised when I started browsing them that I wasn't 'him' anymore. Back then I was an angst-ridden sod and the poems reflected that. So as I gradually moved on, subconsciously at least I abandoned poetry because I associated it with vulnerability and ran out of ideas. I'd dismissed the idea that poetry doesn't have to be depressing or personal all the time. Not that I'd flicked a switch and suddenly turned into a happy chappie of course but my mindset had at least become more balanced.

So I thought to myself, could I write poems based on the new 'me'?

I don't do politics but I've always had a theory that in a tense political environment, where society is horribly divided over issues like Brexit, non-elected prime ministers, lies and Trump, an air of real tension and cynicism boils over and ripens creativity. It's often been said that the 1980s was a horrible decade for politics but a brilliant one for art, with anger, cynicism and satire triggering a fruitful world for the likes of pop music, film, TV and literature.

Three decades on and my enemy was Southern Rail, which had become a satirist's dream, albeit a nightmare for commuters like me. Constant delays, cancellations, staff problems, the wrong kind of sun, sneaky massaging of statistics and several strikes. One day I was checking the timetable at the end of a day at work and several trains had been cancelled for no apparent reason. 'You Southern bastards,' I ranted. Then I chuckled to myself as I suddenly pictured an infuriated northerner shouting it as if it was a football match between Leeds United and Chelsea. I instantly had the ingredients for a poem, based on the temporary death of geographical prejudice. I actually published Southern bastards here because I wasn't sure if it was a one-off or not.

I mentioned to a couple of people at work, when asked about what I had studied at uni, that I'd done an MA in writing, which had included writing poetry. To my surprise they were genuinely interested and one colleague liked the idea of people writing a poem each and during a sunny day have a picnic where people would read their poem. At the time of writing this hasn't happened yet but it made me sit up and wonder if I could still do it. Challenge accepted.

You might be wondering what all this has to do with the title. Well, here's why. The other day I was tentatively googling poetry readings and competitions. I wanted to know what was out there. As you'll have seen, the poems I've published so far on What if I... are all rhyming ones, as are those in the pipeline. You can imagine my surprise when I learned that rhyming poetry in some quarters is frowned upon these days. Indeed, some poetry judges apparently openly advise entrants not to submit rhyming poetry.

I was totally baffled. Forgive me for being somewhat naive but isn't rhyming a huge asset in poetry? Not to mention its rich history and tradition in the poetry canon. Admittedly I'm a borderline fraud when it comes to poetry; my knowledge of famous poets is pretty poor, to the extent that when I was working on Deleting happiness I remember questioning whether I was ripping off 'that Stop the clocks poem'. Thankfully I wasn't. In fact I was closer to ripping off Ruby by Kaiser Chiefs.

I even went as far as looking at the dictionary definition. "Literary work in which the expressions of feelings and ideas is given intensity by the use of distinctive style and rhythm." Pretty much what I expected. Now don't get me wrong, I'm not dismissing free verse, especially as it has also existed for centuries; in fact I'm quite jealous of people who can write poetry that way. And funnily enough, when looking back at my work in 1999, I noticed that I was using free verse quite a bit but my vague recollection is that those poems resulted from stream-of-consciousness exercises and were a bit messy as a result. My rhyming ones were better and some have aged fairly well although now I would class them as the equivalent of pop music demos; they needed extra production and that may yet happen.

The problem I have with free verse is it can easily stray into 'what does this actually mean' territory - the equivalent of some abstract and conceptual art - and a clever poet can exploit this. On the MA course part of our assessment involved teaming up with a colleague and analysing their work. One of the class wrote more or less exclusively in free verse. She was teamed with a pretty unpopular and objectionable bloke and in his assessment he allegedly described her poetry as pretentious rubbish.

The argument poetry judges apparently provide is that rhyme is overly restrictive and forced, and is likely to lead to cliched filler. But isn't that the challenge? To overcome those hurdles? Some believe restriction is a good thing. Father Ted and IT Crowd writer Graham Linehan said that the success of those shows was partly down to putting restrictions on its characters; for example deciding Fathers Ted, Dougal and Jack wouldn't actually conduct any services, and likewise Moss and Roy wouldn't be fixing computers; so the focus would be on the characters themselves and exploring their quirks to create plots.
 
I revisited my school days. Philip Larkin: did his poems rhyme? Yes. Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen: did their poems rhyme? Yes. Shakespeare: did his poems rhyme? Largely yes. Rudyard Kipling's If : did that rhyme? Yes. Are these still on the national curriculum? At the time of writing I believe so. Which begs two questions: what on earth has happened, and why can't modern rhyming poetry be celebrated as well? Even 'Poet Laureate' sort of rhymes.

Pop music has arguably had the biggest influence because the elite doesn't do popular, and over the years lines have become blurred. I love pop but song lyrics tend to prioritise catchiness over substance, particularly in rap music, which displays the sorts of rhythmic patterns that many poems do even if the lyrics are somewhat disposable. I don't have a problem with that but when Shaun Ryder of Happy Mondays and Black Grape fame was described by the now deceased Factory Records boss Tony Wilson as the best poet since Yeats, it was difficult not to snigger. Even Ryder thought it was bollocks.

Then again, when you read works by Benjamin Zephaniah, whose Rastafarian award-winning street poetry and its phonetics are playful and just about as accessible as it gets, perhaps there is a happy medium. But will he break his way into 'the canon'? Probably only when he is dead. The tutors on my MA course didn't particularly rate him.

There's also Roger McGough, whose amusing yet quite reflective poetry usually has a playful rhyme scheme. I went to one of his readings during my early 20s and loved it. He's hugely popular and yet some critics are uncomfortable with his 'fun' and accessible style of poems. I would loved to have studied him at school let alone on my MA but I don't think he has been universally respected enough to be part of the educational canon; which is a shame because some of his works are targeted at children. He said in a recent interview that children are natural poets because they make the sort of off-the-wall observations that poems thrive on. Adults suck the creative side out of them by using rational thought.

I was dangerously close to doing Drama at A-Level rather than English Literature. In induction week the teacher posed the tantalising question: 'What is theatre?' and it prompted a good discussion. But I got talked out of it.

So what is poetry? Are rhyming poems now just considered song lyrics without a chorus? I checked mine again. The closest to that scenario is Gate 22, which is the first poem I wrote specifically for the poetry blog. I gave it a rhythmic feel as I thought a mini rap battle would be fun and without sounding overly smug I think I could write a catchy chorus quite easily. I like it as it is for now, though, especially as it took a long time for everything to come together.

Ultimately, I guess that like everything in life, poetry has evolved and become more expansive. After the 2012 London Olympics, with its spectacular opening and closing ceremonies, Sebastian Coe said that the key was not to compete and make it better, but to do something different. There's nothing wrong with taking poetry to other places but it shouldn't be to the detriment of its 'traditional' form as far as I'm concerned. Unlike bloody Christmas records, the poetry canon should at least be left ajar.

What I've learned is that in my poems I can be playful but I don't have to be 'me' every time. And when I look back at my efforts from two decades ago, that's probably for the best.

Read my poetry here