Poetry Can Be Fun(ny) Too

Note from the author: The following essay was written as part of a final-year university module titled: The Hatred of Poetry. The essay takes influence from Mairead Byrne's 'Some Differences Between Poetry & Stand-up'. Excerpts are used to illustrate points - if no reference is provided, then it is my own writing.

The similarities in the construction of poetry and comedy occurred to me when I was thinking of a new idea for a poem and realised my thought process was perhaps similar to that of an observational comedian. Defined by Richard Herring and Jo Caulfield in their article, ‘The Comedian's Toolbox’, observational comedy is when you highlight ‘something that will hopefully be universally familiar, but that won't necessarily have been consciously noted by your audience.’[1] Essentially, the little things that occur in everyday life that seem strange and amusing when you shine a spotlight upon them. Often these observations produce different effects when used in poetry versus comedy, but that moment of recognition is delivered in both. In poetry it is something we sometimes have to search for and cannot always find, whereas in comedy it is served to us directly in a palatable form. Most can relate to comedian Peter Kay, when he mentions the initial excitement in finding a tin of Celebrations at his Mum’s house, only to be disappointed when instead of chocolates he is faced with a sewing kit.[2] This kind of observation is met with laughter when performed to an audience, but if snuck neatly into a poem may produce a more internalised emotion of recognition. And now, a Haiku to demonstrate:

Pandora's Chocolate Box

You fooled me my dear,

like a Celebration tin

of needles and string.

Specific and universal, tick. Snort-inducingly funny, not so much. It may be that my choice of form constricted the poem’s potential to produce more humorous effects. A haiku may not allow enough space for contextualisation to heighten the effects of the observation, that a poem using free verse might. However, I do believe poets often present their observations in a subtler way than stand-ups.

Confessional poetry looks inward to make use of these relatable reflections on life. Melissa Lee-Houghton’s confessional collection, Sunshine, has humorous undertones existing within blunt, sometimes dark recollections of her own experiences. In her poem, ‘The Price You See Reflects the Poor Quality of the Item and Your Lack of Desire for It’, she expresses a wish that her partner buy some handcuffs and it continues:

?????? ?????“but he says ‘no, you’ll scream. You’ll scream and you’ll scream

???????????????????????until someone comes.’ I say, ‘no one

???????????????????????ever comes when someone screams.’”[3]

Lee-Houghton’s point that when we hear a scream, we tend not to investigate further is both insightful and morbid. There is a sadness in the nonchalant way it is mentioned, but what if that same observation was made by a comedian? Here I attempt to consider the different tone Lee-Houghton’s observation may take if adopted by a stand-up:

No one comes when you scream in the style of knock-off Ricky Gervais:

I was watching T.V with the wife the other day, we heard a scream. She goes oo, did you hear that? Hear what? I said, even though I had heard it, course I heard it there was no way of not hearing it. Sounded like a scream, she said. Oh right, I said, yeah kinda heard it, might not have been a scream though, it was definitely a scream, but you know, Countdown was on. She goes, do you think we should go check? I go, no it was probably just kids playing, meanwhile old Doris is being stabbed next door. Yeah probably just foxes going at it, she says, or the wind. The wind? Since when does wind sound like a scream? But that’s just what we say isn’t it, if we hear a scary noise, it’s probably just the wind. Any other noise and we’re straight to the window. Car alarm? Whose car is it this time? Best not be Karen at 27 again, hers went off 5 times last week. If Karen screams though, we’re not getting involved, it was just a bit of wind, she’s fine.

I think one of the reasons stand-up is received more openly is because it can comfort us by joking about concepts which are dark, or depressing. Poetry can do that too but, the difference is, it does not have to.?

???????????Another way in which comedy and poetry intersect is their ability to subvert our expectations. A stand-up comedian may set you up with a conversational narrative that you recognise, and your mind instantly makes predictions for the ending. For example (cue terrible joke written by me):

I was thinking about my first crush the other day, I was head over heels for this guy. I knew it would never happen though, the distance between us was too much, I was from the Midlands and he was Brad Pitt.

Whilst this demonstrates exactly why I am not a stand-up, it also illustrates my point. The speaker sets you up to hear another location far from the Midlands, in reference to the aforementioned ‘distance’ between the two people. Instead, you are confronted with a different kind of distance, a gap between the individuals’ social status: a Midlands schoolgirl and a Hollywood A-Lister.?And they say jokes are not as funny when you have to explain them.

???????????Poetry too can play with our expectations. In his collection, Dog, John Hegley presents a poem aptly named, ‘Freddie Four Legs’; a narrative of a young boy, Freddie, and the ridicule he faces for having four legs. Though it could have been a tragic tale, the constant rhyming couplets paired with the amusing images of Freddie riding a bike with ‘two legs spare’, or his ‘brilliant impression of a chair’, denote the silliness that makes Hegley’s work so loveable. However, it is when Hegley deviates from our expected, rhymed answer that we as the listener pay the most attention. Referring to how he handles the teasing the speaker says:

‘but there’s times I take it bad,

especially when the nasty comments

came from Mum and Uncle.’[4]

We naturally expect to hear ‘Dad’, which often follows Mum and rhymes with ‘bad.’ By not delivering the answer our minds automatically predict, Hegley makes us feel uncomfortable, amused, and a tad foolish. This tool of deviation is used for comedic effect within poetry and stand up alike.

The similarity of poetry and comedy may be more significant here as Hegley is trying to implement humour within his work, being a known comedic and performance poet. Printed on the back of his collection Dog, there is a quote from the Guardian that reads, ‘If he wasn’t such a profound poet, he’d probably be regarded more seriously as a comedian, and if he wasn’t such a fine comedian he’d certainly be taken far more seriously as a poet.’[5] This raises the idea that to infuse poetry with comedy or vice versa dilutes the quality of either discipline. Yet, this hybridisation of comedy and poetry is what makes Hegley’s work feel richly saturated and more importantly accessible to a broader audience. Questioning the capacity of Hegley’s and similar poets’ work to be taken seriously within the poetry scene conveys existing elitist attitudes, and reinforces the false ideology that poetry is not for everyone.

???????????Contrastingly, comedy is for everyone, it is written with an audience in mind to receive it. People are not ashamed to say that they like comedy, they may even tell you who their favourite comedian is without worrying that they will be met with a stare of disdainful confusion. Mairead Byrne makes light of this in her own essay/talk, ‘Some Differences Between Poetry and Stand Up’:

‘People like stand-up.

· This is the essential difference between poetry & stand-up: Stand-up is

fun—maybe even more fun—for other people besides the stand-up.

· Stand-up makes people laugh.’[6]

Byrne purposefully plays into the stereotype of poetry being dull, because 1) sometimes it just is and 2) she is a poet performing this talk to other poets. She points out: ‘Poets go to stand-up; stand-ups don’t go to poets. Which is why I think I’m safe here this afternoon.’[7] She insults both her audience and herself, another stand-up device, implying the poet gets the most enjoyment out of their work; they get the most kicks, hearing their own clever use of metaphor, lineation and rhythm. She is exaggerating a partial truth for effect, but of course people do like poetry, and for the record, Poetry Can Be Fun:

Poetry can be fun,

said Miss Honey-would-melt

to her phallic-drawing, nearly-snoring,

‘nah it’s boring’ year 10 class,

as she handed them each their copy

of a curriculum-prescribed anthology

the perfect dose for them to doze

off into a Frost-induced coma.

Pay attention, she pleads, this attitude

will lead you all down the wrong road.

Can someone give Steve a nudge,

I think we’re losing him slightly.

I said nudge, not shove, Anne-Marie,

she scolds less politely. Turn to page 63

of your anthologies - Dylan Thomas, and

please open your eyes and read,

let your imagination take flight,

do not fall asleep. We must all Rage,

rage against the dying of the ouch!

Who threw that?

???????????A curriculum staple, Dylan Thomas’ ‘Do Not Go Gentle into that Good Night’ employs the repetition of the titular refrain to powerful, tragic effect. Its meaning changes from an impassioned urge to revolt against death, to the speaker’s personal realisation of his father’s mortality.[8] Stand-ups can also employ repetition; jokes they re-iterate in different contexts throughout a set with escalating comedic effect.?Establishing a narrative thread creates a dialogue of familiarity between comic and audience. I believe the importance of forming a relationship with the audience in comedy is one of the key differences to poetry that affects their construction and likeability. Arguably, comedy exerts its most powerful effect upon first experience. A sketch can be enjoyably revisited, but its impact is likely to be diminished each time. Conversely, poetry invites reinterpretation and re-evaluation. It may be internalised and re-experienced, sometimes more intensely, as time passes.

References

[1] Richard Herring and Jo Caulfield, ‘The Comedian's Toolbox’, The Guardian (online), 22 September 2008 < https://www.theguardian.com/books/2008/sep/22/comedy4 > [accessed 09 January 2021].

[2] Peter Kay, The Big Shop With Mum | Peter Kay: The Tour That Didn't Tour Tour, online video recording, YouTube, 8 December 2020, < https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ab27nNNyno > [accessed 9 January 2021].

[3] Melissa Lee-Houghton, ‘The Price You See Reflects the Poor Quality of the Item and Your Lack of Desire for It’, in Sunshine, (London: Penned in the Margins, 2017), pp. 21-25.

[4] John Hegley, ‘Freddie Four Legs’, in Dog, (London: Methuen Publishing Limited), p. 37.

[5] John Hegley, Dog, Back-cover.

[6] Mairead Byrne, 'Some Differences Between Poetry & Standup',?ubu.com,?< https://ubu.com/papers/byrne_poetry_standup.pdf >, [accessed 31 December, 2020]. p.4

[7] Ibid.

[8] Dylan Thomas, ‘Do Not Go Gentle into that Good Night’, in The Norton Anthology of Poetry, ed. by Margaret Ferguson, Tim Kendall and Mary Jo Salter 6th Edition (New York: W.W. Norton, 2018) p. 1638