Ever wondered why you don't get a better audience at your gig? 

Here's the answer.  Poetry phobia.  No, not the name of some trendy new spoken word event apparently, but the term given to a medical condition discussed by Dr DJ Taylor, pictured, in the recent issue of  Myslexia.  This worrying condition - technically referred to as “metrophobia”, is described by Dr Taylor as a “morbid fear of poetry”.  Apparently, the typical sufferer experiences  mild to acute discomfort when confronted with poetic material (eg poetry on the page, discussions about poetry, readings and slams). 

Beware!  Sufferers - when confronted with the dread source of their angst - can experience the full “fight or flight” phobic-type reactions generally experienced by those who have to come into contact with spiders, stuck lifts, or are forced to travel regularly on London Underground. This discomfort takes the form of “free-floating” anxiety, ie anxiety that is not perceived as stemming from its actual cause.   

We are not told how, then, any connection can be made to poetry at all, particularly  as any sensible person with such a dislike for the genre will run a mile rather than confront their fears,  and presumably won't stick around for a reading or event to have their heart rate tested and found to be off the scale. 

Yes, I remember metrophobia, the name … It sounds like a fear of rhythmic language (or is it London Underground – sorry, I'm anti-tube at the moment). In English, words (the only language I know anything about), regardless of how they are put together, have their own internal stresses and absences, sounds and music.  

It is a truth universally acknowledged that rhythm and rhyme (whilst end-rhyme may not fashionable among some poets) form an essential part of language, the speaking and the learning of it, to say nothing of music, song lyrics, nursery rhymes; virtually any communicated sounds. The first sound an unborn baby hears is the rhythmic beat of its mother's heart. 

So, sorry, Dr Taylor.  I don't believe in your metrophobia. I do believe however that there are plenty of people who don't like poetry and don't want to engage with it; who find prose narrative easier, which mostly of course it is.  That doesn't make it worthier or better in any way. Prose narrative has a beginning, a middle and an end.   Generally, events occur in the expected order and by the time all is done and dusted, the universe stands in its due place, closed off and somewhere else.   

Poetry doesn't behave like this.  Good poetry can upset preconceived ideas about the order of things, sometimes gets into storytelling, sometimes doesn't; sometimes there's a beginning, or an end, but not in the expected places.   The best poetry refuses to be controlled by the reader - or the writer - but presents the world on its own terms, either hinting at a portal to a place of magic and chaos, beyond what we routinely know, or simply pointing to the obvious blessings that we miss in this world while we're busy trying to avoid poetry.

Poetry - like Chinese painting - supplies brush strokes but expects the viewer to fill in the gaps with his or her imagination.   Lack of clear meaning should not be a barrier to enjoying good poetry, any more than lack of clear meaning should be a barrier to enjoying music or the sight of Anglo-Saxon runes carved on old stone. 

Dear reader, should you be suffering from metrophobia, I highly recommend the restorative cure of the Japanese haiku masters:

 

The retreating shapes

of the passing spring -

wisteria

 

(Kana-Jo)

 

 

 

Its face

looks like a horse -

the grasshopper

 

 

(Anonymous)

 

 

Still worrying?