There is a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.

Leonard Cohen, Selected Poems.

Not going to lie, posting every day, or at least as close as I can get for 40 days, may be a challenge too far for me, but so far it’s been a good exercise in keeping things short, simple and effective. No room for rambling when I only have half an hour and a turkey to prepare.

Today’s quote struck me on two counts: one, because it’s true that our faults are very often the chinks in our protective layer where the light we need finally seeps in, and two because it’s a fine example of the songwriter as poet.

I wonder sometimes if the poets of old would be poets today, or would they be competing with Taylor Swift and Ed Sheeran to write the songs that make the whole world sing? My Mum used to quote poetry to me that she had been made to learn at school, John Masefield’s Cargoes or Coleridge’s Ancient Mariner.

My generation learned a little poetry, but learning by rote was out of fashion.

My daughter? She knows song lyrics. She can throw Taylor Swift lyrics at me with the best: You’re a Mansion with a View; I was so ahead of the curve, the curve became a sphere; I felt like I was a cardigan under someone’s bed. She knows so much, it’s crazy. She likes the message, or the sound, or the beat or the imagery. She won’t talk about poetry per se, but get her on Taylor Swift songs and she talks about the metaphor, the structure, the beat, the feet and the sheer joy of the words.

It would be easy to be sniffy about modern songs and, yes, there are many that won’t survive because of the lyrics (and some I wish I’d never heard of) but there are gems that carry us through. Folklore carried me through a rough time. My Tears Ricochet, Exile, August, Epiphany. Poetry, sheer poetry.