Poetry as populism or pedestrianism: We’ll take it

Poetry sales soar as political millennials search for clarity,” trumpeted a recent headline from The Guardian. 

“Record £12m sales last year were driven by younger readers, with experts saying hunger for nuance amid conflict and disaster were fuelling the boom.

“A passion for politics, particularly among teenagers and young millennials, is fuelling a dramatic growth in the popularity of poetry, with sales of poetry books hitting an all-time high in 2018.”

While local stats may be missing out on this phenomenon, it can be pointed out that the poetry anthology Bloodlust: Philippine Protest Poetry (From Marcos to Duterte), released late in 2017, had all of a thousand copies run out before mid-2018. Since any locally published book selling a thousand copies within a year is considered a bestseller, then that Bloodlust collection of 133 poems by 65 Filipino poets may lay claim to having been the best-selling local poetry anthology ever.

It fits the bill apropos Andre Breedt’s explanation for booming sales, that “in times of political upheaval and uncertainty, people turn to poems to make sense of the world.”

In the UK, the aftermath of the Manchester bombing and the disastrous Grenfell fire featured instant trajectories for acclaim for topical poems by Tony Walsh and Ben Okri, respectively.  

Another explanation for poetry’s current acceptance is that “the form’s brevity also meant it could be easily consumed on phones and shared on social media.” Thus, in the UK, “Two-thirds of buyers were younger than 34 and 41 percent were aged 13 to 22, with teenage girls and young women identified as the biggest consumers last year.”

Understandably, leading the bestsellers list was 26-year-old Canadian poet Rupi Kaur, who has 3.4 million followers on Instagram. Sample lines from her Milk and Honey, which topped the list with almost £1m of sales: “You tell me to quiet down / cause my opinions make me less beautiful / but I was not made with a fire in my belly / so I could be put out.”

Uhh, let’s just say that she’s several degrees deeper than a previous teeners’ favorite, Lang Leav. Thankfully, also selling well were works by Leonard Cohen, Seamus Heaney, Carol Ann Duffy and Homer. But a more mature market may have been responsible for that.

Susannah Herbert weighs in: “There is a hunger out there for more nuanced and memorable forms of language.” Jeanette Winterson adds: “Language gets stale in politics. Words begin to lose their meaning. Poetry occupies a different space to the humdrum. It is a way of renewing what words actually mean. It offers you a different way of looking at the world.”

Northumbria University professor Katy Shaw opines: “Social media and technology have made poetry much easier to access and pass along, magnifying its impact. But poetry has a strong oral tradition — it wasn’t always written down, people would learn it and recite it. The one great advantage we have now is the speed at which we can share new work.”

Indeed, it’s been remarkable how new forms have evolved, making Spoken Word gigs popular among young crowds. Here, the 2017 film hits 100 Tula Para Kay Stella and Respeto sourced the heightened appreciation for novel poetry sub-genres. These included hip-hop and battle rap, for which “Fliptop” has become an ill-fated generic, much to the continuing chagrin of the Fliptop trademark founder, my own son Alaric a.k.a. Anygma.

Well, as he’s been told, nothing succeeds like phenomenal success, if Fliptop’s topping the YouTube million-hit charts worldwide is any indication.

Why, a TV channel has tweaked the commercialization even further, with a weekly show that spins its “Tol Wag Troll / Respeto” slogans into “Debattle” — a somewhat watered-down version of battle rap that has the popular emcee Loonie (whose career got a boost from Fliptop) refereeing verbal jousts on such pedestrian topics as traffic woes. Who are more at fault, private car owners or public transport operators? Battle rappers engage in poetic debates a la Balagtasan for the rhythmic discourse — sanitized for the public audience by doing away with customary cuss words and harsh if witty insults. 

At premier performance artist Vim Nadera’s recent birthday bash, a couple of youngsters regaled the guests with an impromptu poetic joust in Filipino, gaining occasional favorable commentary from the “oldsters” present, including the premier poet and Balagtasan exponent Mike Coroza.

I was fortunate to listen up close to Mike’s condensed revelation of arguments that he had made at a recent lecture, wherein he took an opposing view to the convenient one that other literary critics had easily taken, that Pinoy battle rap had obviously evolved from Balagtasan.

Mike shot this down, arguing simply that there can be no evolution if the supposed offshoot does not even acknowledge a predecessor. In fact, he said, what battle rap can claim kinship with are the verbal jousts that preceded physical ones in oral epics such as the Ifugao Hudhud and Ilocano Biag ni Lam-ang. 

I await Mike’s finalization of his lecture to get a keener grasp of his formidable research and astute evaluations.

Meanwhile, white noise by way of my TV left on while I slept recently broke into my semi-consciousness when I heard a familiar chant that went: “Ta-RA-ran / ta-RA-ran / ta-ra / ta-Ra / ta-RA-ran.” The CCN announcer said something about demonstrators in Venezuela.

Full wakefulness brought back the verbal memory: “Ang tao, ang bayan, ngayon ay lumalaban!” Of course. The chant was originally a slogan used in 1970 for Salvador Allende’s political campaign in Chile. “El pueblo / unido / jamás será vencido! (The people, united, will never be defeated!)”

 The slogan came to precede an anthem recorded by music groups such as Quilapayún and Inti-illimani. The song, whose refrain featured lines in iambic pentameter, became a staple in political rallies worldwide, with the lyrics adapted or translated into many languages — from Portuguese to Parsi, Turkish to Hungarian, etc.

In Manila, the progressive band Patatag’s song Awit ng Tagumpay had for its Tagalog encore “Tibayin ang hanay, gapiin ang kaaway! (Strengthen the ranks, destroy the oppressors!)”

Poetry remains universal, whether as protest, populist entreaty, expressions of shallow sentiment, or pedestrian acceptance. Whatever, we’ll take it. The versification is its own evolution.