We are all standing on the shoulders of giants

Recently a tweet by a man named Derek Nichols, about his brother Jordan’s poem, gained much attention on the social media ether.

The poem is a clever play on words that can be read forwards and backwards and gained a great many plaudits from across the world. It has however started to pick up the usual scorn from some quarters as it appears the poem by young Jordan, 14, emulates another poem called Lost Generation. Does this really detract from the efforts of a young boy, or should we applaud the views and feelings he harbours about the way our world and way of life is headed?

We live in a time where nearly every movie or song is a copy, remake, or re-imagining of a classic (sometimes not so classic) and yet we pour adulation on these great feats of ‘art’, sometimes bestowing the highest of honours and awards on them in the process, yet when a young boy sees inspiration and does the same thing with a poem, a poem that holds a far greater and important message than say ‘The Amazing Spider-man’ for example, we are intent on killing him for it. Virtually nothing in the world of art is original today because we have killed creativity in our schools and we are a poorer society for it.

There is much darkness in this world and our news (when it is not covering celebrity trials) and we should take stock of moments like this to encourage our children to make more art, seizing inspiration from things such as the Lost Generation poem and perhaps reignite the artist within ourselves too, for it is the only way to shed some light on the darkness. When we do so we should remember one thing; we are all standing on the shoulders of giants.