176 contemporary poetry
So what’s a cri-de-coeur, cunt? Can’t you speak
the language that yer mam spoke. Think of ’er!
Can yer only get yer tongue round fucking Greek?
Go and fuck yourself with cri-de-coeur! (p. 241 )This division between voices imprints a further element of confl ict
in the work. In an attempt to enable conversation, the poet assumes
the vernacular:
‘Listen, cunt!’ I said, ‘before you start your jeering
the reason why I want this in a book
’s to give ungrateful cunts like you a hearing!
A book, yer stupid cunt ’s not worth a fuck! (p. 242 )As Roberts notes there is a measured degree of discomfort once
the poet enters into the vernacular of the vandal. He contrasts the
poet ‘who grew up poor but in a full employment economy’ trying
to access ‘the world of the unemployed and alienated youth of the
early 1980 s’ (p. 165 ). In his articulation of the skinhead’s voice,
Harrison questions the effi cacy of poetry as a political weapon:
‘Don’t talk to me of fucking representing / the class yer were born into
any more’, ending with the assertion ‘it’s not poetry we need in this
class war’ (p. 244 ).
Tom Leonard, well known for his poetic compositions in
Glaswegian dialect, declares in ‘The 6 O’Clock News’ that the
newscaster has a BBC or RP accent: ‘coz yi / widny wahnt / mi
ti talk / aboot thi / trooth wia / voice lik / wanna yoo / scruff’.^16
Leonard’s mordant and sardonic work transcribes speech patterns
and dialect into staccatoed lines. The implication of this poem is
that other accents do not have the authority of ‘trooth’. Leonard
is, however, emphatic that his poetry does not aim to inscribe
nationalistic sentiment at the heart of poetry. On his website he
has posted a note for all GCSE students countering the BBC
Education website’s pedagogical reading of his poem:
The poem’s take on accents has nothing to do with the
writer ‘being Scottish’ as a BBC ‘GCSE bitesize’ model
answer on the poem suggests, it is instead about social class.