Something a bit different today.
I decided to have a go at writing in the style of a rap battle. You’ll see why.
What? You think my poetry doesn’t keep it real
That I don’t speak or feel the real freakin’ deal because I know
What iambic pentameter is?
Because my poetry isn’t amateur diss after amateur diss?
You think my obsession with form is so special, abnormal,
That it’s forced and divorced from emotion? Of course
I went on a course where I learned all my stresses and feet
Never earned any rhythms or beats
Spitting rhymes on the street
I must have read it in a book
So I get funny looks
Cos I went and I took
Inspiration from my poor little not-that-rich girl formal education
Which was real to me
My reality
I was raised on plays by Shakespeare,
Lays from the past years,
Verse that changes gears and charms the ears and calms the fears
And all you do is jeer
Because my poetry doesn’t speak to you?
Why don’t YOU read a book!
Who the fuck
Do you think Shakespeare wrote for?
For rich and for poor during peace during war
Will would shoot and he’d score.
Cause his verses said more
Than the lessons you slept through in school
Because you were too cool.
So you closed up your ears
And your jeers hid your fears
Of poets who’ve been keeping it real
For hundreds of years.
So yes I see the beauty in forms
As you pour on your scorn
Say you prefer free flowing verse without even knowing the worst:
This too is a verse form?
The internal rhymes, the syncopation
Allow me to improve your education!
Your battle rap rhymes are as formal as any normal sonnet, sestina,
vilannelle, virelai,
rondeau, rondine, rondel, roundel, roundelay,
haiku, haiburn, hajaz or horatian ode.
They’re not some secret code
They’re a heartbeat
A smart beat
You can’t treat as elitist no more
Because whatever you thought before
You know now
That these forms aren’t just mine
They are yours.
Tom Juniper Poetry 