Stuart Robertson - Photographer

“That author has no love of language”

The televised judgement

Of a professional scholar

Paid to appear in superior wisdom

Providing literary insights and bitter comparisons

Now here’s the rub

There’s more than one Shakespeare

Look in the phone book

And find two or three there

 

If it gets written for any reason

The story that’s told

It’s why people read them

What use a book on the shelf?

Puffed-up with importance

A stagnant legacy

In need of translation

Give me a West-side story

Not movies with Gwen in

 

Minority pass time

Not worth a life-time

Of ploughing through classics

To learn life from dead lips

And outmoded attitudes

It don’t take a genius to say something meaningful

Snobbery’s shallow whatever guise it’s in

 

Exercise imagination

Loose yourself in the page

If it calls to you so strongly

Then the writer has earned their salt

Despite what the critics say

Burn literary companions

not novels with magic within