Poetry
Punk poetry is perhaps the best recognized of traditional punk literature. Many punk poets are also musicians. Major punk poets include:Richard Hell, Jim Carroll, Patti Smith, John Cooper Clarke, Seething Wells, Raegan Butcher, and Attila the Stockbroker. Jim Carroll's autobiographical works are among the first known examples of punk literature. The Medway Poets, a British punk performance group, was formed in 1979, and included punk musician Billy Childish. They are credited with influencing Tracey Emin, who was associated with them as a teenager. Members of the Medway Poets later formed the Stuckists art group.
A description by Charles Thomson of a Medway Poets performance contrasts with the sedate image of traditional poetry:
Bill Lewis jumped on a chair, threw his arms wide (at least once hitting his head on the ceiling) and pretended he was Jesus. Billy sprayed his poems over anyone too close to him and drank whisky excessively. Miriam told the world about her vagina. Rob and I did a joint performance posing, with little difficulty, as deranged, self-obsessed writers. Sexton finally introduced us to his girlfriend, Mildred, who turned out to be a wig on a wadge of newspaper on the end of an iron pipe.
Read more about this topic: Punk Literature
Famous quotes containing the word poetry:
“German poetry is going in a very different direction from French poetry.... Its language has become more sober, more factual. It distrusts “beauty.” It tries to be truthful.”
—Paul Celan [Paul Antschel] (1920–1970)
“As civilization advances, poetry almost necessarily declines.”
—Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800–1859)
“Much verse fails of being poetry because it was not written exactly at the right crisis, though it may have been inconceivably near to it. It is only by a miracle that poetry is written at all. It is not recoverable thought, but a hue caught from a vaster receding thought.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)