Poetry, please

By Thomas Mason-Paley

To celebrate National Poetry Day this week, I thought I’d share a few choice lines from William McGonagall, fondly remembered as history’s worst poet.

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‘He has written the life of Sir Walter Scott,

And while he lives he will never be forgot,

Nor when he is dead,

Because by his admirers it will be often read.’

The author of over 200 poems, it could be said McGonagall certainly suffered for his art, as reported in the Scotsman:

‘For many years he performed at a Dundee circus, where he would happily read his poems while the crowd was permitted to pelt him with eggs, flour, herrings, potatoes and stale bread. He received 15 shillings a night, but the events become so raucous that city magistrates eventually banned them’.

Unfortunately, the city magistrate’s response created further suffering, as McGonagall’s outrage led to a new poem unleashed on the general public:

‘Fellow citizens of Bonnie Dundee

Are ye aware how the magistrates have treated me?

Nay, do not stare or make a fuss

When I tell ye they have boycotted me from appearing in Royal Circus’

Although I may not admire his verse, I do admire McGonagall’s passion; neither criticism, public humiliation nor, it seems, physical assault, could prevent him from picking up his pen. Like McGonagall, I have always loved poetry, believing, as Matthew Arnold wrote, 'Poetry is simply the most beautiful, impressive, and widely effective mode of saying things.'

Unlike McGonagall, fortunately, I have never tried to write verse myself. ?It has, however, informed my bid writing. Like poets, Bid Writers need to capture their readers attention and express the maximum meaning in the shortest number of words (especially for word count conscious public sector bodies). As such, I always keep Ezra Pound’s advice in my mind and believe this is a great dictum for all bid writers:

'Use no superfluous word, no adjective, which does not reveal something. Don't use such an expression as “dim land of peace.” It dulls the image. It mixes an abstraction with the concrete. It comes from the writer's not realising that the natural object is always the adequate symbol. Go in fear of abstractions.'

This, in turn, reminds me of Sylvia Plath’s great quote, ‘Poetry, I feel, is a tyrannical discipline. You’ve got to go so far so fast in such a small space; you’ve got to burn away all the peripherals.’

For me, the ability to strip away superfluity and peripherals and focus on the key message or meaning is as important to bid writing as it is to poetry.

It’s equally important in solution design . Living this mantra, PeopleScout recently re-engineered Heathrow’s recruitment and assessment process, developing stripped-back, authentic and signposted video and written content which enabled us to reduce assessment times from weeks to 8 days.

As such, it seems whether poetry, bids or solutions, perhaps ‘less is more’. Now, didn’t I read that in a poem somewhere?