What The Butler Saw

What, you might ask, could Pete Doherty and a 60-something literary biographer who hates pop music possibly have in common?

The answer, I have discovered, is that poetry is now cool.

When I read in the Guardian a few weeks ago that Pete Doherty was a big fan of 'fuckin' hardcore' poet Emily Dickinson, I sent a link of the article to my mother, an Oxford academic who is currently writing a biography of Dickinson. In the article, Doherty explains he has borrowed lines from Dickinson's poetry for his songs: '"Aargh, she's outrageous man! She's fuckin' hardcore! Can't ignore her." What did he pinch? "I took one draught of life, paid only the market price," he quotes from his At the Flophouse. "I added, 'and now I'm estranged.'" He sings, "Wow, wow, wow - oh, look around it's so true," impersonating first an electric guitar and then Lou Reed. "I took one draught of life, paid only the market price, now I'm estranged." '

I thought Doherty's interest in poetry and literature in general boded well for authors of literary biographies. It's hard to get publishers really excited about classic literature and those who write about it, as opposed to commercial fiction.

And I was intrigued as to the reaction of my mother, who doesn't know the difference between Pete Doherty and the Spice Girls, and has barely heard of rap or hip-hop, Madonna or Michael Jackson, let alone ever listened to them (she says the 'rhythms' of pop/rock music go against her own inner grain).

So yesterday I was delighted when mum told me she was herself quite excited about Doherty's love of Dickinson. 'Poetry is dying on the page,' she said, 'But as a spoken form I understand there's quite a buzz about it. Musicians are using poetry. I'd like to know more about this Pete Doherty.'

She was also admiring of Doherty's admission to stealing a copy of Crime and Punishment from the prison library. 'I think it's quite the right thing to do,' she said, in a rare moment of anarchism.

So perhaps there will be a new wave of romanticism in which young, rebellious musicians and artists take over poetry and reinvent it. Perhaps it's already happening. And perhaps that will help literary biographers rule the world at last.