When I was a teenager
and I know that that might be very difficult to believe
looking at the current version
but when I was a teenager
I was doing the thing that a lot of teenagers do
in that I was experimenting with writing poetry
because I thought that poetry looked easiest
which is the first big mistake
that I made in my writing career.
And I was writing, I suppose
poems that pretended to be about the H Bomb
or the injustices of the world
but which were largely about not being able to find a girlfriend
and what I considered to be the injustices to me.
Initially, this poetry was written
typed out upon an old-fashioned typewriter
and intended for publication
in the little duplicated poetry fanzines
that me and my friends were publishing in those days.
And I'd be very happy with these early poems.
They looked good on the printed page.
This sense of smug self-satisfaction
lasted exactly until my first poetry reading
where I actually had to get up in front of an audience
and read this drivel.
And lines that had looked fantastic to me on the page
suddenly became impossible to navigate.
There were syllables out of place
There was a... Just a wrong balance to the words.
You couldn't really read them
with any degree of elegance or music.
And what I learned
was that in writing, to be read aloud
the most important element is rhythm.
I soon realised
that it's not just for writing that you're going to read aloud.
If you're just writing a page of text
the reader of that text will be creating the rhythm
in their own head.
This is the immense importance
of having rhythm in your prose
because it's mesmeric, it's hypnotic.
You can carry an awful lot of material
on just the rhythm of a thing.
It's a brilliant element for actually enchanting
and getting the reader into the mesmeric trance
that you are trying to create.
Now, effectively, there are two basic rhythms.
The first
and the one which I probably use perhaps too much
although I don't really think so
that would be the iamb.
It's easy to remember what an iamb is
because the word "iamb" is an example of an iamb.
It's basically a two-beat thing
where the stress is on the second beat.
Iamb.
The other form of this is the trochee
which, again, actually is a trochee.
It's a two-beat thing
but the stress is on the first syllable.
Now, iambs are fantastic.
Most of Shakespeare is in iambic pentameter
which is basically five double beats
five iambs to each line.
Dee-dum, dee-dum, dee-dum, dee-dum, dee-dum.
Now, that is great because it's very similar, apparently
the iambic rhythm is very, very similar
to the rhythm of natural human speech.
Whereas trochees are great for incantation.
That boom-boom, boom-boom, boom-boom, boom-boom.
It's got a kind of tribal beat to it
that, if you tend to write in trochees
it will inevitably end up sounding like Hiawatha
and nobody wants that.
So...
It's important to read your work
and I can't stress this enough.
When you have typed a passage, read it aloud to yourself.
Read it through.
See where the bits are, where you've left a syllable out
where the rhythm is broken for just a second
because that is a break in the mesmeric trance
that you're trying to cast over the reader.
It's something that will draw them out of the story
whereas the continuous beat of the rhythm
will continue to involve them right to the end of the piece.
There are different ways of using rhythm.
For example, the beat writers
people like Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg.
They were trying to recreate
the much more free-flowing rhythms
of jazz and bebop music.
There is any...
A multiplicity of rhythms that you can employ in your prose.
Just know which one that you're using
know what effect you want it to have
and it will enrich your writing immeasurably.
On the subject of rhythm, I perhaps should say
that there are slightly different considerations
to, say, writing a piece of prose
a pure piece of text, and writing dialogue.
Now, human dialogue does have its rhythms
but they are not the same
as a piece of poetic or lyrical text.
Human dialogue has clumsy rhythms
because it has hesitations.
It has "ums" and "ers" and things like that.
Repetitions.
To be actually naturalistic about dialogue
will mean including these things.
However, there will still be a rhythm
in what people are saying.
We are quite a musical species in the way that we talk.
And I think that...
Basically, it's worth remembering that iambs
the two beats, with the emphasis upon the second beat
is reckoned to be the closest rhythm
to the natural rhythms of human speech.
This is why Shakespeare used iambs almost exclusively.
I would probably say
that my first real experience
of writing with a rhythm that satisfied me
was a piece that I wrote
when I was perhaps 23 years old.
This would have been around 1975
when I actually invented
gangster rap.
I was anxious to write a piece
for reading aloud at public performances
that really utilised
what I had come to understand about rhythm.
And so I wrote this piece
where the only important thing in it is the rhythm.
Yes, it's an interesting poem
with some interesting images and things like that
an interesting atmosphere.
But the thing that takes the reader
from the beginning to the end of this piece
is its rhythm.
And that's why I wrote Old Gangsters Never Die.
"Old gangsters never die.
Except the few that pass away in cinemas at midnight.
Lie there sprawling in the footlights
for the usherette or ice cream girl to find.
And if I die, God knows I might
don't let me die in black and white.
Don't make me share a haunted screen
with every other ghost-boy
who stood trembling in the foyer sipping wine
and shot his cuffs and coughed
and checked the time and stepped outside
and got cut down by dead policemen
faces strobing in the panic-light.
Their long dark cars parked out the back
their haloes black against the night.
And John Dillinger's name in finest bullet-silver
etched upon their hearts, a cold tattoo upon their skin
right next to where the badge is pinned.
I could die carefully at dusk.
Cos, buddy, I once owned a pair of diamond collar studs
and as I live and breathe, I swear that that's no lie.
And them with such good taste as me
deserve to cash their chips more elegant
than those without a shirt upon their back
or shine upon their dancing shoes.
Like playing poker.
Being dealt the ace of flames
you stand, and whispering once your mother's name
pitch headlong dead across the roulette table
bullet holes pinned like Armistice poppies
in neat rows across your back.
Or drowning.
You know, so many hoods and hitmen got sent down
to tread the riverbed for all eternity.
And now they look like statues
in some cold, submerged art gallery.
And I would gladly kiss the hands of any man
who'd bind my wrists and send me down
to be in such good company.
Dutch Schultz, Capone.
Why, men like that had hell-stars in their eyes
and when they walked in groups of more than three
they must have looked like grounded constellations
torn down from a B-film sky.
Old gangsters...
they never die.
Say, wouldn't it be nice to fall asleep forever
in some old speakeasy in the 1920s
where they never pulled aside the blind and looked outside
to find that...
That 50 years had washed away
all of the legends
and the zoot suits
and the bloodstains like a fistful of dead roses
someone left there with the hatcheck girl
and drove off into old Chicago
with their windows wound and their radios turned down
to keep their holstered shoulders
cold and dry.
Old gangsters...
they never die.
Say, John!
I got the tickets for the show here in my very hand.
Enjoy the show!
And when you kiss that girl goodnight
there in her red dress streaming, do it carefully.
Good burgundy upon the tongue, for she will kill you, John
and one must always kiss one's killer.
Now, ain't that so?
Hey, Ma! They shot your boys out there.
And as I live and breathe, I swear I never seen a pair
who fell so sweet
to hear the final poetry of cordite in the air
or turned their faces up, like so
receiving death as if it were a... a mother's kiss
or something black and rare.
Hey, fellas.
Hey, is it cold there in that movie-house tonight?
Come on, let's pass out that Jack Daniels
and we'll talk about old murders, double crosses
and dead blondes, and we'll say, 'Here's looking at ya.'
'Here's blood in your eye.'
Old dreams wear dusty clothing.
Old ghosts sit in the back room.
Old bodies don't tell stories.
But old gangsters...
never...
die."