Running, jumping, climbing trees…

Published in European Vibe, October 2008

I’m not very good at waiting patiently in airports. What I hope at other times is a friendly, relaxed personality descends into an anxious rage: my eyes bore holes in the loitering airport staff, I mutter un-publishable oaths at anyone who dares to try and slip silently into the queue and, in general, all my cheerful thoughts dissipate amidst a steely desire to board the plane as quickly as possible.

So it was, as I stood recently waiting in line for my aeroplane to Sardinia, seething away like Beelzebub with a hangover. And to quell my impatience for the seafood, pizzas and red wine that I imagined were waiting for me at the other end, I decided to skip into W.H. Smith’s and browse through a list of the latest paperbacks. I emerged about ten minutes later with a copy of Stephen Fry’s, The Ode Less Travelled.

Stephen Fry is a bit of a hero of mine. Not only can he lecture away for hours on almost any given subject, he also played the dashingly dumb General Melchett in the BBC’s wonderful Blackadder series, whose memorably bungled plans for victory during the Great War have been voted amongst the best moments in British comedy history.

In The Ode Less Travelled, Fry the writer emerges, turning to his great love – poetry. It is, he claims, something that we all have the ability to produce, and equipped as we are with the ability to speak and write English – there is less of what he refers to a ‘spadework’, before we can get started. The book carries a two-fold purpose: firstly Fry is keen to let us know that poetry does not merely consist of what we experienced at school: endless speculations about Wilfred Owen’s use of metaphor, or two page guesses at what Wordsworth’s cloaked verse signified. The art of poetry he suggests is misunderstood one, and has suffered from stigma as a result.

Secondly Fry writes extensively on ‘how poetry works.’ Just like writing a song or painting a picture he reminds us, writing a poem demands the strict observation of a number of rules. Fry trounces the commonly held belief that in poetry ‘anything goes’. ‘Suppose you had never played the piano in your life,’ he muses, would it be enough to suggest to a beginner: ‘Don’t worry, just lift the lid and express yourself. Pour out your feelings.’ He goes on to make the valid point, ‘We have all heard children do just that, and we have all wanted to treat them with great violence as a result.’

With due detail, and exhibiting genuine skill as a teacher, Fry instructs us mere proles how to write a Petrarchan sonnet, a Sapphire Ode, a ballade, a villanelle and a Spenserian stanza. Along the way there is discussion of metre, Iambic Pentameters, Pyrrhic Substitutions and various other types of poetic form. The Ode Less Travelled is lightly written, littered with trademark humour and carefully chosen example quotations. In short, it is your best introduction to the misunderstood but revered world of Auden, Shakespeare, Tennyson and Coleridge.

Prior to reading The Ode Less Travelled, my own poetic experiences had been limited. I can remember most of the words to The Owl and the Pussycat from primary school, my father used to recite Milligan’s In the Ning Nang Nong when I was about five (the line about the monkey all ‘going boo’ has remained with me), and that was it, aside from a paralysing fear of Philip Larkin at school and singing rude songs about Birmingham City Football Club.

So, whilst you’re off on your European adventures, perhaps you should consider unlocking your poetic sensibilities. Knock that Spaniard flat with a romantic stanza, crucify the cursed obreros with a razor sharp couplet or just merely learn some complicated Greek words to impress over dinner. After all, if you want to make an impression, don’t they say that the written word is more powerful than the sword?