Subject of an interesting conversation among my students the other night. I also hosted a discussion on the subject a few years ago at the P Soc - so, what do you think about uses of what are called the F and C words (being coy here as I'm not sure what controls Jane has on).

The general feeling seemed to be that F & C in their sexual usage were better than poeticised euphemisms (we've been there in the past).

Let's have your examples of when c~nt and f~ck work (or not) in a poem - however the poet has styled it.

The obvious one (and one of the best) is Larkin's 'This Be The Verse' (no need to quote that one). I think the f word also works well in his poem 'High Windows':

"When I see a couple of kids
And guess he's f*cking her and she's
Taking pills or wearing a diaphragm,
I know this is paradise

Everyone old has dreamed of all their lives--
Bonds and gestures pushed to one side
Like an outdated combine harvester,
And everyone young going down the long slide

To happiness, endlessly."

The best example that comes to mind of a poem using the c word is in Rita Ann Higgins' 'Some People'. The poem begins ""Some people know what it's like to be called a c*nt in front of their children..." There follows a blackly funny list of what 'some people' know, what it feels like to have to pretend you're out when the milkman calls with the bill, what it's like to work on a dead-end jobsearch scheme, etc. The slant rhyme doesn't come in till the last line, about a page and a half later "And some people don't".

From a recent one of mine -

'Dangling from a silo, the c--t with the
pink ukelele can hone his ego on my fist.'

T x

They're tricky words, c--t and f***. f***, especially, has so many different interpretations (as demonstrated in the Larkin examples).

I think you have to know exactly what you're doing to get the words to work well in a poem - if the context isn't right then people are either going to read the word as gratuitous, or misinterpret its meaning (a person not aware of the wider uses of the word f*** might have problems understanding "This be the Verse" - incest?)

I rarely use the words in my poems - I managed to write over 2 dozen love/erotic poems in the past couple of years without feeling the need to invoke f*** or c--t in any of them. I called the resulting collection "Poems to quote to your lover (before and after you f***)" mainly to garner the google hits.


ps: after previewing this post, I'm curious: why the suppression of f***, but not c--t?

Kim A's poem, F***, doesn't hold back.

Because f*** can only be sexual or abusive, whereas c**t can be anatomical - as well as abusive and sexual! Besides which, I have one, and when I talk about it, I like to call a spade a spade ... or rather ... ;)

Having said that, I'd rather you didn't pepper this thread with c**ts, as our kind sponsors, invision, do tend to take a dim view of such things. It is, after all, perfectly true that minors may be browsing this forum.

So if you could all stick to the discreet c**t situation in future, I would be terribly grateful. To that end, I've edited your post.

Word filter applied.

Many apologies.

i had the brilliant novelist/filmmaker matthew licht at the whitechapel last night (the moose showhas just come out with salt) and the last story he read was both hilarious and very 'rude', full of f**ks, c**ts, d**s and so on, though more carry on than erotic (matthew has written for various porno magazines and has a dry, sometimes outrageous, wit). amongst the 50 or so audience in the bar was an eight-year old boy, there with his mother. at the first swear word, his head went down and for the next 10 minutes or so he completely absorbed himself by drawing footballs with my green marker pen on the back of a poster. although earlier in the evening one of the readers mentioned 'sex' at which he let out an almighty UURRGH!

Hi Roddy, Hi All

Possibly one of the very best examples I can think of, of f--k working well in a poem, is Carol Ann Duffy's poem 'Adultery'. But it's a great poem for lots of other reasons.

Echo on Narcissus in D. Riley's 'Affections of the ear':

He called 'I'd die before I'd give myself to you!' I shrilled 'Give myself to you!' ran nearer.
If he'd cried 'I'd die before I'd f--k you', at least I could have echoed back that 'F--k you.'

But if you still insist on resonance -
I'd swing for him, and every other c**t
happy to let my father know his station,
which probably includes yourself. To be blunt.

Don Paterson, "An Ellyptical Stylus", Nil Nil.

Being a typical wet liberal, I always have a bit of a problem myself with using c**t as a term of abuse. There's such a huge tonal difference between calling someone a p***k / k**b etc. and calling them a c**t; if you want to dismiss someone as insignificant / laugh them off you use the male genitalia, but if you want to say they're really nasty you use the female genitalia, which strikes me as maybe a tad misogynistic.

But in p***y we can use whatever words we want, as long as we use them well... As already pointed out, it's easy to use the f and c words gratuitously. I think the DP example works well - the whole p**m is a seethe of rage about the hi-fi specialist being condescending to the narrator's father, and I love the way the verbal shotgun gets aimed at the reader in the final line. Kaboom!

I was at the Salt Margins reading too - I bet that kid's going to have some interesting stories to tell his schoolmates.

Oh that poor little kid. I feel for him. And my kids wouldn't go to a p****y reading of ANY kind, not if you paid them good money.

I think Annie hits the nail (as the actress said...) on the head. We're talking about poems that work, naturally - but it's just vocabulary. I think I've used the C word twice - once as the title of a small squib called "The C word," in which the word never appears (but every line ends on a rhyme with it), and once in a dramatic monologue where the girl's effing and blinding and she reports that that is what her boyfriend called her.

If you go back in time, obviously Rochester, but also Donne to a certain extent was a LITTLE bit coarse... there wasa really striking example I read a few years ago, used in the sexual sense, but now I can't remember what it was.

Forgot about this, (from Tony Harrison's discussion with his skinhead alter ego in V):


"I wish on this skin's words deep aspirations,
first the prayer for my parents I can't make,
then a call to Britain and to all nations
made in the name of love for peace's sake.

Aspirations, c*nt! Folk on t'f*cking dole
'ave got about as much scope to aspire
above the shit they're dumped in, c*nt, as coal
aspires to be chucked on t'f*cking fire."

In Ali Smith's novel The Accidental two different characters write poems, presented to us in full. One of them is a sonnet which begins, quite touchingly

F*ck poetry. F*ck books. F*ck art. F*ck life.
F*ck Norfolk. F*ck his job and f*ck his wife.

The end of Carol Ann Duffy's 'The Woman Who Shopped':

The sky was unwrapping itself, ripping itself into shreds.
She would have a sale and crowds would queue overnight
at her c***, desperate for bargains. Light blazed from her now.
Birds shrieked and voided themselves in her stone hair.

Alexander Hutchison's poem Didn't Do (for Norman), presumably referring to Norman MacCaig, begins like this:

Well, I'll tell you
what he didn't do:

he didn't have a neat
wee c**t and push it around;

he didn't lean on - or into -
not for a sense of obligation;

he didn't smear all over
like old tar on foreshore rocks;

he measured by what what he admired
not by what he might get...

(from Carbon Atom, Link-Light Press, 2006)

I think the use of c**t is very effective there.