Читать книгу The Incomplete Tim Key - Tim Key - Страница 14

INTRODUCTION

Am I a poet? It’s a question I have often been forced into pondering. I don’t want to be pondering it. I don’t like pondering it. For me, it’s a no-brainer. I am a poet. And yet the insinuations persist. The innuendo. Other people raising the question. Making it an issue. And so I have to ponder it. And I get fed up with it.

I don’t know why I’m asked it, I really don’t. I doubt the other great poets ever had to put up with that kind of bullshit question. The Keatses, you know. Plath. These people would never have had some sad little no-mark come up to them, a sloppy old grin plastered all over their face and ask them, ‘Would you honestly call yourself a poet?’ I doubt Auden would ever have had that. Wordsworth. And yet, honestly, I have to say I’m fielding that question between two and five times a week. Would Pushkin have had that? Is it a factor for McGough?

My response is always dignified.

I’ve got class. I just haul my hardback anthology from my rucksack and I jab my thumb against the cover. ‘Yes, mate!’ I’ll say. ‘Hence why I’ve got a goddamn anthology!’ and I’ll open the sod up and I’ll leaf through, slapping my palm on top of the poems and saying: ‘Is that a poem?’ and ‘And that one? Feels like that’s a poem,’ and ‘What’s that if it’s not a poem?’ Usually, the chump who’s driven me to this comes back with fairly solid answers to these questions, at which point I draw out my iPhone. I find my Wikipedia page and use my thumb and index finger to zone in on the crucial words. ‘Tim Key is a poet’ it says. And I read it out again and again at these helmets. ‘Tim Key is a poet! Say it!’ and by the time I’m trudging off, they’re saying it back to me, and as I get further away they’re corrupting it and saying other things. Variations on a theme. And I jam my fingers in my ears because I don’t want to hear it. Any of it.

Evidently the splodges of writing set on the pages of this book are poems. That much is clear. Indeed, revisiting this book, I saw an opportunity to rectify something that’s been bugging me for a while. In the hardback version I noticed that every poem was introduced by its title, its number and the word ‘poem’. Increasingly I would look at this word and think, ‘Well, that’s totally unnecessary; of course it’s a poem.’ You wouldn’t visit a gallery and see the word ‘art’ scrawled above all the lovely paintings. So why must my book be riddled with this word ‘poem’? I emailed Jenny about this. I told her the only reason we should be writing ‘poem’ in this manner is if we consider there’s some doubt as to what the fuck these things are. She agreed that that would be the only reason. I emailed again and she told me not to worry about it. I emailed saying I wasn’t worried but I’d noticed none of the other poets had the word ‘poem’ above their poems in their anthologies. She emailed back saying she’d make a call on it. Should think so, too. I look like a bloody idiot with the word ‘poem’ written above my poems.

Of course, if I’m not a poet there’s a problem. A big problem. I’ve spent my life thinking I am one, so if the rug gets pulled now, what do I have? If I’m not a poet all that’s left is for me to reflect on the hours, the days, the weeks, the months, the years, the decades, the God-knows-what, that I’ve wasted. All that time glugging the sherry, scratching the parchment: to find out it was for nothing would kill me. These must be poems or otherwise nothing makes sense any more. If they’re not poems then what the hell was I doing all that time? It would be like someone going up to an acclaimed plumber and saying, ‘None of that was plumbing.’ His world would fall apart, poor thing. If someone’s telling him that ‘All that stuff you’ve been doing under sinks over the years, that’s just been basically moving pipes about – you haven’t been plumbing.’ It would kill him. In fact, the most likely outcome would be that he would fight back. He’d say, ‘What? No, I am a plumber. Look, here’s my card.’ And that’s more or less where I am with it. Am I a poet? Yes, here’s my card (my card says ‘Tim Key: Poet’).

So I am a poet then. A professional poet. Published. I’m tempted to say, ‘Don’t take my word for it – read this book and make up your own mind.’ But I think it’s that kind of bombastic statement that’s caused a lot of the problems. I think better to just say: ‘I am a poet – take my word for it.’