Should poets be drug-tested?
Last week while waiting to see a specialist about viral arthritis, I read in the papers how two Pakistani quicks had been banned for taking proscribed drugs. According to The Guardian, Shoaib Akhtar had been taking so many supplements - Red October, Maximaximal, Yingtangtiddleyepo - he'd should've been sponsored by Superdrugs.
I'm going to Oz, funded by Arts Council England, to write poetry about the Ashes Series. My consultant was pleased I was off the steroids for my arthritis - now just a memory - but said I'd still fail any sports drugs test for months to come.
'Should poets be banned for taking drugs to enhance their performance?' I asked.
'Definitely not,' she replied
What do you think? Have your say below..... Should poets be exempt from drug-testing? Should they be allowed to break the law in pursuit of the muse....
....Stacks of great poets from Rimbaud onwards have taken proscribed substances to augment the muse. See "Widdicombe Corner - A quick guide to pharmalogically influenced work from Samuel Taylor Coleridge to Irving Welsh." http://www.lit-net.org//index.php?screen=reader&LinkID=482&viewCat=18
"Which do you prefer? Grass or astroturf?"
"Don't know, never smoked astroturf." Joe Namath, New York Jets Quarterback
I'm going to Oz, funded by Arts Council England, to write poetry about the Ashes Series. My consultant was pleased I was off the steroids for my arthritis - now just a memory - but said I'd still fail any sports drugs test for months to come.
'Should poets be banned for taking drugs to enhance their performance?' I asked.
'Definitely not,' she replied
What do you think? Have your say below..... Should poets be exempt from drug-testing? Should they be allowed to break the law in pursuit of the muse....
....Stacks of great poets from Rimbaud onwards have taken proscribed substances to augment the muse. See "Widdicombe Corner - A quick guide to pharmalogically influenced work from Samuel Taylor Coleridge to Irving Welsh." http://www.lit-net.org//index.php?screen=reader&LinkID=482&viewCat=18
"Which do you prefer? Grass or astroturf?"
"Don't know, never smoked astroturf." Joe Namath, New York Jets Quarterback
posted by David Fine | 9:15 PM
1 Comments:
Without the slightest shadow of a doubt, poets should be drug-tested. Regularly.
Each and every poet, before their each and every poetic assignment, should be subjected to the most stringent of tests. Failure to provide proof of ingestion of sufficient quantities of narcotics should result in an immediate banning from the circuit.
Those poets found to be suitably addled - and really, no urine or blood test should be necessary to determine this - would be rewarded with grants and literary acclaim and held up as an example to our children.
Honestly. Who ever heard of a poet who wasn't off his face? Sheesh. Amateurs.
Kind regards etc
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