If You Drop Dead

If You Drop Dead - Brutalist Poetry #1

Author: Fletch Fletcher

Brutalism is often called ugly and bleak, but it has a purity of line and space, a rough surface texture, and an underlying sense of weight and mass.

Brutalist Poetry conforms to some, or all, of these points:

* Words set in concrete.
* Rejection of classical styles.
* Built on tension.
* Minimalist. Pared down to the bone.
* Divisive.
* Egalitarian.
* Resistance to metaphor.
* Radical imagery.
* Hard consonants.
* Authentic. The Brutalist lives the words.
* Anti-heroic. The Brutalist is a pleb, not a prophet.
* Screams from the Gig Economy.
* Dry humour. Deadpan delivery.
* Pan for gold.
* Contradictions exist.
* Printed on paper, only.

Poetry definition: artistic writing that stirs a reader's imagination using the lyrical arrangement of words i.e. meaning, sound, rhythm.

Brutalist poets are different. Their music is discordant. They work in the Gig Economy and they suffer. They drink too much. They're in the airport pub long before the flight to Crete. Onboard they won't sit still, won't shut up, and the plane gets diverted to Utrecht. They're taken off in cuffs and everyone cheers, films it for TikTok.

This is the poet of the Wetherspoon generation. This is the poet I want. Brutalist on the page and Brutalist in the head.