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One bard’s open letter to the Poets on the Underground triumvirate
DEAR Judith Chernaik, Gerard Benson and Cicely Herbert,
I jumped with joy when I first saw Wendy Cope’s poem “The Uncertainty of the Poet” on the Underground.
It wasn’t included in her first collection, Making Cocoa for Kingsley Amis (Faber), the most outrageous first book of poems published in the 20th century apart from Stevie Smith’s Not Waving But Drowning.
The same year was 1986 when, most amazingly, the three of you first got Poems on the Underground (Potu) off the ground. I quote the first three Alice in Wonderland-type stanzas:
I am a poet.
I am very fond of bananas.
I am bananas.
I am very fond of a poet.
I am a poet of bananas.
I am very fond.
This was written in response to a painting in the Tate before it had become Tate Britain and Tate Modern.
In an article published in the Camden New Journal in I998, I wrote: “Potu, like Alan Bennett and Marks and Spencer’s socks, may be a victim of its own success.” It has become a national treasure like AB. Unlike him, Judith, Gerard and Cicely hide their lights under a bushel.
In four months’ time, Faber are publishing Wendy Cope’s Selected Poems. She is to my body and mind the archetypal Potu poet. She gets to the parts of the body that most other poets don’t ever think of reaching.
One of her most amusing, “Lonely Hearts”, which I am astonished I haven’t seen on the Underground or in any of the editions of the Potu anthology published by Cassell, is about dating in north London. It is aimed straight at the jugular.
Recently in the Guardian, Wendy complained that many poets are plagiarising her poems on the internet, without ever thinking that she needs to be paid. How about choosing her as the main Potu poet in June?
She is the most amusing Poet Laureate we have never been able to enjoy in that role to date. Andrew Motion hasn’t got much longer to go in the job.
I write this to you partly in response to the Chinese poems on Potu, which began in January and to Bei Dao’s in particular. Why didn’t you include “A Picture”, for his daughter Tiantian’s fifth birthday? I quote it in full:
Morning arrives in a sleeveless dress
apples tumble all over the earth
my daughter is drawing a picture
how vast is a five-year- old sky
your name has two
windows
one opens towards a sun with no clock-hands
the other opens towards your father
who has become a hedgehog in exile
taking with him a few unintelligible characters
and a bright red apple
he has left your painting
how vast is a five-year- old sky. *
With warm good wishes from
John Horder
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