Sekar Vijay Kiran, a poet who likes music, is of the opinion
that the way poetry is taught in Bangalore’s schools and colleges leaves a lot
to be desired. Often teachers who don’t understand poetry themselves ‘teach’ it
to students. Everyone with a BA, MA, MPhil and PhD in English cannot teach
poetry. If you’re lucky, you’ll have a good poetry teacher in school or
college. But most students are unlucky in this regard.
Given that most students know little about poetry, they
confuse song lyrics for poetry. It’s common for school students to borrow
generously from song lyrics and put them into ‘poems’ they write. Sekar Vijay
Kiran isn’t of the view that writing poetry should be left only to poets. How
will there be new poets if failure is not tolerated, he asks.
From a commercial viewpoint, he feels, song lyrics have
considerably more success than poetry. How many bookstores stock poetry by
contemporary poets? A few do. How many people accept poet as a job description?
Only publishers and other poets will.
Poetry written by politicians receives a lot of media
attention. The quality of this poetry hardly matters. The poet is more
important than his or her work. Publishers are eager to publish the poetry
books written by politicians from the ruling parties and the opposition.
It’s important to pay attention to song lyrics says Sekar
Vijay Kiran. It’s possible to overlook what a song’s lyrics are and what they
are about. Failing to do so can leadto embarrassing situations online and
offline.
