‘Poetry must get its hands dirty…’
It is amazing to look at just how much poetry and literature have changed
throughout the years. For instance, during the romantic era, why did poets
such as Byron sell so well? Of course, the confines of society were very different;
socially the public were unable to explore many of the things which are allowed
to do freely today. Our present media has hardly any restrictions and so some
of what the romantics used to leave to the imagination and undoubtedly some
of what used to appeal to a public starved of the social freedom to explore
themselves and each other without strict confines is now gone. Once upon a
time, the description of a lady's bloomers was considered risqué enough to
inspire thousands of sales and hundreds of critics. Now, that explanation
in a children's book would not turn a hair. So how are the authors of today
to recapture the public imagination? When everything that is shown on the
television and in magazines is considered, how does an author looking for
credibility find something gritty enough to write about that will inspire
the minds of thousands of people into buying it, and reading it? It is a tough
task to recapture the public imagination once it has been lost, however, the
1990's did indeed do just that, launching a new and exciting kind of literature,
one which overthrew the increasing public opinion amongst the young in particular
that poetry and books were boring. The author of the 1990's was born into
a fast paced, fast changing society that demanded cutting edge fiction and
imagination to hold its attention, and just how was this done?
No-one tackled the issue with more vigour, and arguably more success than
Irvine Welsh with his novel, Trainspotting. Since it's publication in 1993,
the book has sold nearly a million copies, and has been translated into thirty
languages . Irvine successfully managed the near impossible task of recapturing
the minds of a generation of young who were intent on merely living out the
fantasy of 'rebel' - this is a fantasy which involved piercing, tattoos and
drugs, but certainly not reading. How did Welsh overcome this? He cleverly
created a novel about all the above things. Trainspotting is essentially about
four young lads who get wasted on drink and drugs, have sex, get tattoos and
piercing and rebel against society's constraints. It worked; it gained such
high praise as to be called 'the best book ever written by man or woman..deserves
to sell more copies than the bible.' Never a better way to capture the attention
of 'the rebel' than to write a book that inspires comparison with the bible.
This really is a novel for the new age, rather than trying to recapture something
that has passed, a time which has finished when things were written for a
different audience, Welsh has really looked long and hard at his present audience
and considered how best to write something which they feel neither threatened
by, nor judged by, but which they can identify with, and not feel silly for
reading. Welsh has made sure that his novel fits in nicely to the 1990's 'gritty'
scene, the novel 'gets its hands dirty' both metaphorically and literally;
'Ah started tae feel a crippling nausea and the room began tae spin. Ah fell
oot ay the chair n puked tomatay soup aw ower the fireside rug. Ah don't remember
getting pit tae bed.'
It is amazing that a novel so essentially about getting wasted enjoyed the
success that it did - after all, this is what most of the children of the
90's were doing. But perhaps therein lays the beauty of the novel, its abject
realism means that it appealed to the 'drug' generation. It was truly a novel
they could identify with.
Considering the dirty context of the book you could be forgiven for thinking
that it is irresponsible for someone to publicly promote a novel of this type,
however Welsh is not that irresponsible. The novel does not simply start and
end with getting wasted and what happens when you do, look a little deeper
and the message appears that in fact, living this kind of life can lead to
nothing but destruction. When Renton tries to make a new life for himself
in London, his two friends hold him back, unhappy about being left behind
in the drug induced state whilst Renton moved forward and pushed out of the
sphere;
'Sharon was right. It's hard tae change people.'
The following chapter after this quote is named 'Exile', in itself, a powerful
word that echoes the struggles we then have to witness of a junkie trying
to kick his habit. The book is full of 'Junk Dilemmas', which are little snippets
into how the mind of a junkie works, with some real gems of information such
as;
'Thir's nivir any real dilemmas wi junk. They only come when ye run oot.'
Welsh, with great skill, has managed to capture the attention of an audience
he knew were fascinated by this kind of lifestyle, and then incorporate into
the story just how much getting involved in this circle of people can ruin
your life. The desolation and isolation of trying to stop a habit when the
only people you know are people who indulge in the same thing, and how they
will always try to drag you back down with them.
Let us turn for a moment to the selection of poetry which we find in The New
Poetry. This anthology consists of poets and poems which fit in perfectly
with the sense that modern poetry 'gets its hands dirty.' Here we have many
examples of authors who have tackled modern day issues, political, religious,
race, every poem being unafraid of speaking out about radical points of discussion.
To illustrate this point, lets begin with a poem by Ian McMillan, M1 Seascape
near Hoyland;
'For the interview, the gaffer is proud; 'We only have six more miles of motorway
to roll up and dump in the sea.' He quips.'
This may be short but it gets straight to the point. This is just one of many
poems in the anthology that illustrates the fickleness of the media when it
comes to promoting something which is in their best interests. The real issues
- in this case, pollution, in many other cases, religious abuse, racism, political
argument, pretty much anything that is up for argument gets faced head on
by the modern day poet. This is not the way in which we are used to seeing
poetry of old, imagining Keats writing a political piece on the situation
of the government at the time is hard to do.
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