Fundamentals – Ian Duhig

I first came across ‘Fundamentals‘ in the early nineties and it was a bit of a revelation to me. I was a real poetry snob at the time, and I don’t think I really knew anything post-1970, assuming it was all bollocks. But I loved this and went on to buy The New Poetry, which introduced me to lots of other worthy voices, including the wonderful Ian Macmillan, who was lucky enough to correspond with a couple of times many years back. But back to the poem. I found it to a breath of fresh air, very clever, funny, any very accessible. I used it a few times teaching Spanish kids English but much more than that it influenced my own poetry by challenging what I thought at the time a poem ‘had to be’. I won’t deconstruct anything but in this case I just wanted to pass on the recommendation as there aren’t many poems I go back to just to cheer myself up, or even many that I re-read often, but this is definitely one of the few.