Something incredible happened today: the Twitterati – used to passing mob justice on telly, celebs and politics – turned their attention to poetry. More specifically a poem in the London Review of Books by Craig Raine.
How Mr S’s heart leapt as he saw Raine’s name trending up there with Andy Coulson and #NationalRunningDay, could it be that an English poet was proving more popular than the Kardashians?
Alas not. There had not been a significant boost in the cultural tastes of the keyboard warriors. Instead they were raging after poetry critic Charles Whalley tweeted Raine’s poem ‘Gatwick’, describing it as ‘grim’. The poem describes his attraction to a young woman. It includes the line ‘I want to say I like your big bust’:
While Mr S is yet to hear back from Whalley as to whether it was the poem’s content or overall quality that gave him cause for complaint, the usual suspects have declared it evil that an artist has dared to challenge the views of the public:
Some sorts of books and dramas have very strict rules. We like a lot of things to be absolutely predictable. In romantic comedies, a girl chooses between a charmer who turns out to be a rotter and another man she hates at first but then falls for. In the BBC’s long-running Casualty, if a worried
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