Streets ahead in his art

Some might think this a skewed non-sequitur. Eminem lauded by Heaney. Ireland’s great man of letters, living heir of a millennia or more of Irish literary masters, acclaiming Eminem, rapper supreme and a multi-million unit shifting global phenomenon. Where are the two linked? Except that they both sell so extremely well in their fields.

Heaney boldly went on record acclaiming Mr Mathers as inspiring an interest in poetry not seen since John Lennon and Bob Dylan spurred similar in the 1960s. He further averred that Eminem "has sent a voltage through a generation. He has done this not just through his subversive attitude but also his verbal energy."

Is this another Disco Dad hanging with the bros? And looking a big-style fusty? Or is Mr Heaney more conversant with his onion rings than one might think? Is Detroit’s white-trash phenomenon doing for poetry what Harry Potter is doing for children’s literacy?

Any attempt to drag pop lyrics and rap within sight of literature is always greeted at best with scepticism, and at worst with outrage, from those who know and have always known what true culture is and isn’t.

However, such elitism is currently receding, along with the impossible indecisiveness of cultural relativism. So, one can now ask: can popular music be poetry? Well, of course, if it’s good enough. The best architecture is art; the worst isn’t. The best commercial art is art; the worst isn’t. The best rap and pop lyrics are art, are poetry; the worst certainly aren’t.

Was Bob Dylan poetry? Yes, at his best. Was John Lennon poetry? Yes, at his best. As have been many between then and now: Lou Reed, David Byrne, Mark E Smith, Ani Da Franco, Shaun Ryder, and hundreds more.

How many better lines have there ever been than the song-title Only Love Can Set You Free?

Is Eminem also poetry? Of course. It’s slickly inventive, it keeps you surprised, you can’t see all the rhymes coming. And a singular energy compels you to listen.

I co-run Big Word, promoting poetry cabarets, slams and workshops in Edinburgh, and throughout Scotland. I have frequently been asked if hip-hop is the new street poetry. So, is Eminem the new street poetry? These are great questions to answer.

Hip-hop may be the street poetry. But it not the new street poetry. For there is no old street poetry. There is no old mass vernacular populist poetry to replace. For poetry has long been in the hands of people who are certainly not street.

To find poetry that is truly populist, successful and in the vernacular, one has to go further back. Way back.

To where a cursory study of literary history shows that pretty much all the greatest classical and Anglophone poetry has been populist. Homer. Chaucer. Dante [a literary revolutionary simply for simply being in the vernacular]. Shakespeare. Donne. Marvell. Pope.

Rabbie Burns was the quintessential multifaceted populist writer. At ease in every level of society and every literary medium. From doggerel to high art; from pornography, to ballad, to anthem.

And Byron, who, lest we forget, sold shed-loads in his own lifetime.

Heaney himself must be populist, because he is so popular. Hip-hop, and rock’n’roll before, have long been taking back the power over words, over what is good, from the literary cabal who have so carefully kept that power.

The rise of universities in the mid-Victorian age sucked up into the quadrangular Ivory Towers the naysaying and yaysaying over what wasn’t and what was, to the elitists. And a cabal of critics, Bloomsbury-types, poets, sinecure merchants have kept curious amounts of sway ever since.

It was as if the second half of the 20th century never really happened. Elvis Presley never left the building, he never entered in the first place.

In Britain rock’n’roll broke the first cracks in the high porcelain edifice. Dub, poetry, and rap cracked it more. Yet it still holds shakily in place, probably ready for a good final push from the next hip-hopped generation.

In a less hidebound North America, rock’n’roll struck deeper crevices. But it was rap which changed everything.

In the late 1960s and early 1970s New York proto-rap outfit The Last Poets took poetry where it had never been, ultimately spurring the rap explosion of the late 1970s and early 1980s. And ever since it has grown constantly bigger. With Eminem currently sitting on top the hill.

Rap also gave birth to Slam poetry. First in Chicago, then in New York, now all states in America. In Scotland, the slams are the most successful shows Big Word has ever put on.

Meantime, elsewhere on the Darwinian family tree, rap had led to Mr Marshall Mathers. White trash boy from Shitesville, Detroit Central, as tough a place as you’ll find.

In the US the waves of slam haven’t so much overwhelmed the islands of high culture as gone round them. Creating slam poetry, a big and popular movement, unparalleled in another country, growing ever bigger.

Whilst meanwhile, elsewhere on Dubya Ranch, Eminem, a white-boy up there as cool as the black guys, is current King of the hip-hop hill. And in 2003 this is a very high hill. For hip-hop is huge. So Eminem lives on the pinnacle of an omnipresent global phenomenon leaving no market unturned.

As a poet, reading the tabloids, and then hearing Eminem, I am most struck by one thought: his fame belies his talent. He is so much better than he needs to be.

You don’t need talent to be a successful pop star: as A1, Blue, etc, testify daily. But Eminem has it by the bucket-load. The sounds keep coming at you. The play with phrasing, musicality, speed and exclamation are thrilling. The timing is amazing, incredible, unearthly even. The sound bending is shocking. The use of timbre, pitch and tone stunning. The command of technique is utterly compelling.

The words themselves are frequently a delight. Except when he’s on the radio going "radio won’t play my jam". Which has to be a tad irritating. The rhymes surprise, their invention charges the mind. This is good brain food for fast-growing minds.

Eminem compares very well to would-be street poet, Mike Skinner of The Streets. Where Skinner’s words are vocally flat, lyrically uninventive and rhymingly obvious, Eminem’s come at you from all angles and in all planes. And while Skinner’s tales might have interesting comment and connect easily with the listeners, Eminem grabs you with both story and sound bite, rhythm and rhyme.

Shocking again is what he is allowed to say. In an age where everything is packaged, where the marketing men have a hand in everything, Eminem is pretty much allowed to do what he likes and say what he likes. In a country where rebellion is fake, where attitude is preplanned by committee, he has brilliantly ridden himself to the top without any constraints over what he can do. He is the fabled Hollywood director who is allowed final cut; of which there aren’t many.

But yes, the words. What of the words. Is it poetry? Well who is anyone to say it’s not. It’s not like poetry was before. But the future is never quite like the past. It might not be technically brilliant, but technique isn’t everything.

Siegfried Sassoon must be considered a technically superior poet to Wilfred Owen, but who would you rather read?

It is interesting that Heaney, obviously no Disco Dad, has singled out Eminem’s energy. For it is the power of his words which most works. The energy engages, an energy quite free of the music.

This is language used as people use it now. Or how they want to. If they could. Not how they used to. Or still do in the cloisters of academe. This is words spoken how people use them. This is the language of the street. This is the oral tradition reworked for a new age. And this age, the MTV, CNN age, is not a subtle age.

For now hip-hop is the language of the street, it is the street poetry.

And like it or not, hip-hop may well be the language of tomorrow, the culture of tomorrow. Who knows how far this can take poetry? Who knows how far this can go?

And perhaps this is poetry going back to what it first did. The Truth. It may not be the exact truth, but its as close as we’re going to get for now.

Jem Rolls is currently on a 15 week Canadian tour of his one-man performance poetry show. He co-runs Big Word Performance Poetry whose Fringe Festival show will be at 5:30pm everyday at The Tron.