Lawrence Bourke’s A Cold Touch begins with a poem called ‘Advice to a Failure’. Expressed with such force as to render grammar a secondary consideration, its argument is hard to grasp al first, but the poem is only technically meaningless: it contains, I think, an important truth:
The committee can stick
their mate with medals until the man’s all brass
but his brilliant chest will never help him frame
a line to shine like those of poets who came
to nothing but writing well writing for themselves
and us the simple truths some call fiction.
The line that shines, in other words, is a prize that outshines the brass and medals. Few, I suspect, would disagree with Bourke on this specific point. But why is something so uncontroversial expressed with such conspicuous force? Is Bourke, I wonder, as baffled as I am as to why certain books get medals at all?
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