All Talk 48 - Passing Exams and The Trouble With Modern Poetry

DR. NOSTRUM

Some people I tell, in the music business, or, whatever, just talking about things, um, some people are actually impressed by the fact that, you know...

HUTCHBACK

That you can add.

DR. NOSTRUM

...no, by the fact that I did Economics.

HUTCHBACK

But you didn’t do Economics.

DR. NOSTRUM

Well, I did do it.

HUTCHBACK

You did it for about..

DR. NOSTRUM

No, no, I did it, I took my exam in it and everything...

HUTCHBACK

Did you?

DR. NOSTRUM

...A level. A level Economics, I got a U or, er, a D, you know, but.. but..

HUTCHBACK

And they’re very impressed!

DR. NOSTRUM

No, no, the comeback was; at least you did it. And I was thinking, well, I suppose so, but...

HUTCHBACK

You could have done anything and got a U in it.

DR. NOSTRUM

Well, no, I didn’t get a U, I got a U in something else, but that’s.. that’s cos I wrote songs, instead...

HUTCHBACK

Okay

DR. NOSTRUM

...which they obviously didn’t like...

HUTCHBACK

No...

DR. NOSTRUM

Biology, I wrote songs.

HUTCHBACK

No, they don’t like that. There aren’t many songs in Biological text books.

DR. NOSTRUM

Imagine if you could have written songs though, for your exam, and got an A.

HUTCHBACK

Mm. They’d have had to have been very good, biological songs.. (has an Epiphany and sings) “Your knee bone’s connected to your thigh bone.” It’d have to be of that caliber, but more about “your platelet’s connected to your red blood vessels and all that business...

DR. NOSTRUM

Yeah

HUTCHBACK

...and that’s how you create Adenizine Tri-phosphate.”

DR. NOSTRUM

You’d have to be, I mean you’d have to be pretty smart to pass all your exams in meter and rhyme, that would be an achievement.

HUTCHBACK

Yeah

DR. NOSTRUM

I suppose the only exam where you’d do that is in poetry and they probably don’t even do that any more.

HUTCHBACK

No, I don’t think there is Poetry A level.

DR. NOSTRUM

No. There was some poet on the radio saying about, you know, people bemoan the lack of meter and rhyme in modern poetry, but, you know, “they’ve got to get with it cos that’s so old fashioned.”

HUTCHBACK

“Man”

DR. NOSTRUM

And I was thinking, isn’t that poetry, and what they do now is, well, I suppose it’s still called poetry, but in fact it’s just speaking. Really.

HUTCHBACK

It’s just a load of words, stuck together on a fucking page.

DR. NOSTRUM

It is really.

HUTCHBACK

That’s the problem with modern poetry.

DR. NOSTRUM

It is. I mean it has it’s own internal rhythm, but it’s unfathomable unless you can hear the person speaking who’s written it.

HUTCHBACK

But that’s the point. Everything becomes worse over time.

DR. NOSTRUM

It’s just words.

HUTCHBACK

Everything becomes worse over time – that should be the subject of this post; how everything becomes worse.

DR. NOSTRUM

And we got that off the front of a BNP leaflet.

HUTCHBACK

Oh yeah. Forgot about that.