Pretentious Drama Students
I don't know what the GCSE English syllabus looks like these days (if it's still called a syllabus; I'd heard they were now calling it a "specification"...), but when I was in the midst of it, but a few years ago (clinging to youth as long as I can), we were required to study a handful of poems from an anthology compiled by the exam board.

I've never cared much for poetry. I thought some of the Ted Hughes stuff was alright, and a few of the others were quite funny, but a lot of it was just pretentious wanky stuff by modern poets desperately trying to seem modern.

I don't know whether it was to try and raise the enthusiasm of my fellow students and I, or whether it was just because they had nothing better to do, but the A-level drama students from the 6th form college across the river decided to put on a performance for us.

They decided to perform these poems as short plays, interpretive dances and other such bollocks.

You know the times when a performance is so eye-wateringly, bowel-churningly bad that you feel embarrassed for the people performing, and just wish the ground would swallow you up on their behalf? This little montage epitomised that feeling.

They took on the roles of the characters described in the poems (badly); they emphasised the lines which were supposed to be key to the poem and particularly meaningful (predictably); one guy even decided to rap one of the poems. To be fair, he was black, built like a brick shithouse, and looked the part in baggy jeans and a bandana, but setting this diabolical poem to a hip-hop beat was just embarrassing to watch.

They honestly seemed to be so far up their own dramatic arses that they were performing without the slightest hint of irony - they seemed not to have thought for a moment that if we were able to watch this performance from the safety of a TV screen, away from the ire of the English teachers (who seemed to be loving every minute of it) then we would have been howling with laughter at this trite crap.

And so, for an hour, we cringed, winced and visibly shuddered as we had to watch this pretentious bollocks being unfurled before us. We knew these bloody poems already (read: we were sick of them already) and all these bastards managed to do was make us hate them even more.
(LongJohnBaldry, Fri 28 Nov 2008, 16:37, 4 replies)

I very much approve
of your old man grumble in the first paragraph.

"If it's even called a syllabus, in my day it was a syllabus, bloody kids have it easy these days, grumble grumble mutter mutter..."

Although people accuse me of being an old man too...
(Bearded Whumpus In chav Britain, schoolgirl offers sweets to YOU!, Sat 29 Nov 2008, 8:47, closed)

The poetry is still there
But there's nothing by Ted Hughes, so it's even shitter now. It's mostly Simon Armitage and Carol Ann Duffy who, as expertly described by yourself, epitomise art wankery.
( MatJ LOOK, Sun 30 Nov 2008, 3:13, closed)

I've taken lots of writing classes
and I always write poetry with art-snobs in mind.
Once I wrote a poem about Sam the Ugly Dog that included the line "he is not made of beef", simply because I wanted to fuck with their heads.

The teacher uses it as a bloody example to the rest of the class, saying how it's a great metaphor, blablabla.

I hate art-snobs. Everything's always got to have a deeper meaning for them, because all we have is not enough.
( Grokthought wouldn't pay that for Chinese 5-Spice, Mon 1 Dec 2008, 11:29, closed)

^ This is partly the reason for my extreme cynicism
We used to spend hours in those classes picking apart the 'hidden meaning' behind every phrase. And then they tell you to go away and write your own poem, and fuck me is it easy to copy that pretentious style, like looking wistfully past your reflection and into the corner of the mirror as you wank yourself into a fit of 'creativity.'

And, as you rightly point out, they lap it up, anything as silly as "he is not made of beef" or "the gate is left open" or even "that year, only petunias grew" is suddenly valid as long as you can pretend you're really earnest about it.
(LongJohnBaldry, Mon 1 Dec 2008, 11:50, closed)