We do not write for posterity. We do not write for eternity. Or, rather: we do not write solely for these things, and our motivations are obscure and irreducible. And poetry can be for language what satire is for politics; and the act of writing poetry itself can likewise be emancipatory – only a little, perhaps, but it can be nonetheless; and the reading and the hearing and the sharing of poetry can all be of their finite time and place and thereby be exquisite; and, further, sir, beauty is not inherent in a thing – beauty is what we make of it;- please, bear these things in mind, sir.
(Hill’s lecture on poetry and policing and public order and the Poet Laureate is worth a listen to – but it would be much better read than heard, I think. That said, his voice is marvellous - he’s a doomladen Geoffrey Whitehead. Somewhere – to misquote Andrew Marvel on Ted Hughes – between Gandalf and God.’)
