Working it out in the remix

With an after poem

As you may tell from the change in my graphics I have been listening to a lot of Charli XCX recently. I am not her target demographic and never have been, but I have seen her live and have always loved her ICONA POP collaboration ‘I love it’. It sounds wild and reckless and it is so FUN to sing to. Especially when driving, or even better in a standstill traffic jam to give ultimate contrast between reality and escapism.

Her new album, brat, is brimming with beats and honesty and it is so FUN to sing to. So I love it too. A big moment in the brat summer story was the remix with Lorde where they share lyrics about the most human of feelings that is so rarely shared with such honesty. The jealousy of competitiveness amongst peers, that happens in all walks of life, but it is exaggerated for clickbait in the case of celebrities. Of course it happens online in all walks of life. We have all seen a ‘sub-tweet’ or a deliberately vague but pointed instagram story or Facebook status and tried to put 2 and 2 together and got to infinity of assumptions filling in the blanks. We know how much more nuanced the hinted at arguments are in real life when it comes to people we have met, but celebrity ‘beef’ is portrayed in such cartoonish language (see ‘beef’) we forget the humanity of the people who are celebrities. Usually until it has gone so far people need to hashtag about being kind all over the internet.

In ‘The Girl, so confusing version with Lorde’, they rip up the celebrity clickbait playbook. Especially the ones for female artists who are constantly being pitted against each other. They only get to be BBF/Cheerleaders/Squad goals or enemies. No nuance is usually allowed. And this song is dripping in nuance and the confusing experience of competition. I see it in poetry, but I also see it in the office. I have seen it in voluntary groups and I have seen it in pretty much any situations where humans are put together in groups of any kind. It is on snapchat and LinkedIn, it has no entry level or age limit. It happens regardless of levels of money or status involved or not, it is human. An anthropologist could probably explain the science but the humanity of the lyrics of ‘so confusing’ is good enough for me.

In poetry a remix is called an ‘after’ poem. It takes inspiration from a poem by another poet. They can be subtle nods, direct steals, or versions that turn the original on its head. A really good ‘after’ elevates your relationship with the original poem. However, this type of poem is not without risk of being mistaken for just plain old plagiary, as this article from Vulture explored (including some fun references to 16th century poetic ‘beef’).

I wrote a poem as an ode to the after a few years ago, and Charli’s song reminded me of it. Mainly because I wonder what a really good poetic clearing of the air between poets would look like, or if they already exist? If anyone knows of any good examples please drop a link to them in the comments as I’d love to read them.

An ode to the after