David Mitchell

In the town I grew up in, there was a local character called Martin Ford who would hand-write long poems of four-line verses. He’d photocopy them, give them to people on the street, and put them up in shop windows.

They were not ‘good’ poems. Lines were bludgeoned until they rhymed. Even in the pre-online world, it was a slightly crazy thing to do. But I get now what he was doing. He captured the voice of a lot of people on local and international issues, and he did it in a way that anyone could understand.

I remembered Martin Ford after this event last night – Poetry and Politics, part of the Imagine Festival. Moderated by the BBC’s William Crawley, Emma Little-Pengelly (DUP), Kate Nicholl (Alliance), Claire Hanna (SDLP), and Deirdre Hargey (Sinn Féin) read three favourite poems and talked about the role of poetry and language in politics and life. Doug Beattie (UUP) couldn’t make it.  

Thirty-minutes in, I was getting a little worried. We’d had Sinn Féin recite Bobby Sands, the DUP eulogise Paisley’s, and the King James Bible’s, ways with words, and the Alliance Party express concern for refugees. Maybe this format was just going to prove that we all really do live in separate cultural silos in Northern Ireland. But that’s not at all where we ended up.

Most of the discussion had little to do with ‘cultural traditions’ or politics, even in the broadest sense, nor anything as Northern-Irishly predictable as how ‘art bring can us together’ (which it can). It was about poetry!

The fact that these were politicians turned out to be incidental. What mattered was that they were non-poetry types, showing us the everyday value of accessible, plain poetry. The poems we heard (CS Lewis, Hollie McNish, Derek Mahon, Maya Angelou and others) were all comprehensible. I mean, you actually knew what they were on about. The first time.

We surely need more events like this. They would help give people permission to like poetry, something, the panel noted, many people feel they don’t have.  

One man in the audience commented it’s hard to actually find poetry these days. It’s on social media, although even then you must look for it, or be chosen by an algorithm. William Crawley mentioned how some people read a poem a day, and wondered what this might do for our imaginations. Emma Little-Pengelly said we all need more beauty in our lives. There was audible emotion in some of the readings, and it’s pretty amazing how a poem can do this – within seconds, even when we know what’s coming.  

Heaney, apparently, was banned by the organisers, presumably because he’s a little too easy for Irish people to reach for. But William Crawley wasn’t having it and read a killer one, The Skylight.

Add in a lot of banter and anecdotes, and a great night was had by all, as they say.

I’m away to track down a photocopier.