Thursday, May 19, 2011

I like that said Offa, sing it again.

The poet as makar. Not as sage or seer, or recorder of the human condition or shaper of texts suitable for the educational system, or cultural analyst or popular entertainer, or even as spy. These, and many other activities are all valid but peripheral.

The poet as someone who makes or composes poems. Poems as constructions , as patterns of words which when heard (or in our culture, predominantly read, but nevertheless finally heard in what might be called ‘the Inner ear’) give us the experience of something we label as poetry. And which other sorts of verbal expression do not.

Gael Turnbull, 'The Poet as Makar' from The Star you Steer By.

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