Plasma Nights
seductive bright light
of the evening narrative
ease of habit
the need to relax
heck
we all need a break
so it goes
day into night
something to talk about
social cohesion
*
which is entertainment
which is value
which is passing time
which is bonding
movement on the retina
movement in the brain
reinforcement
which is
processed information
spectator dialogue
plasma brother
*
privileged
by bombs
we occupy
the dominant narrative
for subjects
far away
who may envy us
if seen
on their screen
About this poem
This poem was included in Best Scottish Poems 2008. Best Scottish Poems is an online publication, consisting of 20 poems chosen by a different editor each year, with comments by the editor and poets. It provides a personal overview of a year of Scottish poetry. The editors in 2008 were Rosemary Goring and Alan Taylor.
Editors’ comment:
So used have we become to Tom Leonard writing in phonetic Glaswegian it’s easy to overlook how at ease he is – as he is here – in standard English. Few writers are more political than he and Plasma Nights is as political as it gets. On the face of it, television is a benign presence in our lives, a commonplace relaxant that gives us communally “something to talk about”. After the first, deliberately soporific stanza, Leonard quickens the pace, as if jolting us into sensibility. By the final stanza the “evening narrative” has become the “dominant” one and every syllable is an ironic landmine.
Author’s note:
Big Brother was a Stalinesque figure mouthing “propaganda” on a square screen. Now it’s a wide, in-every-home plasma screen, with Mr and Mrs Newscaster standing easily, or sitting side by side chatting to camera, or occasionally between themselves. Chatting with mannered but wide-eyed engagement in “the” rolling 24×7 “news”. News that never contradicts government foreign policy—which is to say nowadays, all-party policy: which is to say NATO policy, which is to say American government policy, which is to say European Union policy. There is an agreed narrative: it is “common sense”.
It is worth looking at sometimes to find out who this week’s “monster” is. Mugabe? Beijing? Karadzik? Putin? They are not part of “our” society, that society which bonds newscaster and watcher. It is not a propagandist stance, of course. It is not hectoring. It is easy-mannered, smart-casual, nothing hot-headed.
And always, out of sight of camera, the unseen narrative of the arms industry, maintaining what is called “the balance of power”.
Let’s watch the news. One never feels one’s day is complete unless one finds out what today’s news is. It’s like opening the window of a morning, and seeing the world in its usual place.
