11/11 Found Poetry.

[Bob Pacey]

Ooooooh this sounds like a bit of trouble brewing between the Doc and the Old Bill,

Gonna sit on the sidelines and watch this one brew,

Very colourful turn of speech there Doc ! spoken like a pollie no doubt.


Robert

[Stephen Whiteside]

It's an interesting question, isn't it?

Do judges make good poets?

I can see pros and cons - though more cons, than pros.

The pros are, I suppose, that it takes a fair bit of intelligence and education to become a judge - and perhaps, wit, too - and all of these are handy attributes for poets.

The difficulty, though, is that judges are constantly required to suppress their natural emotions. They are not required to give personal opinions, they are required to interpret the law. They are not required to apply personal morality, they are required to administer the law, often according to precedent.

One would expect their emotional lives to atrophy under these conditions. Of course, it could be argued that they may react against all this conditioning in their private lives, and hence become good poets. The difficulty with this argument, though, is that most judges don't have much in the way of private lives. They spend their evenings locked away in their studies working on their judgements.

I have always suspected that the best poets fail at pretty well everything else. Anybody who can subject themselves to the rigour of life as a judge probably doesn't have a great poet lurking inside them trying to get out. (Similarly, the fact that I have been able to hang in there as a doctor over the years probably means I don't have the makings of a first rate poet/writer.)

The notion that a judge might make a great poet also seems to have overtones of class. This is the very sentiment writers like CJ Dennis fought so tenaciously and successfully against a hundred years ago.

My guess is that you might find great poets who were judges in the nineteenth centuries and earlier - when professional lifestyles were a little more leisurely - but I doubt you'd find one in the 20th or 21st centuries.

It would be interesting to see a list of poets who were lawyers or judges. As I said earlier, you might find a few in the ranks of failed lawyers. (Robert Louis Stevenson springs to mind as an example. I think he dropped out of law school after a couple of years. Could be wrong about that. I know he campaigned for a while against capital punishment. But I'm getting off the track.)

Of course, judges and lawyers (and politicians) can be great public speakers and orators, but that is very different to being a poet.

[Heather]

Stephen were you captain of the debating team at school?

[Stephen Whiteside]

No, but my son was. I guess I inherited it from him (a bit like the judge's daughter, perhaps...)!

[Heather]

Just curious Stephen. What did your father do?

[Heather]

Or, should that be: Just curious Stephen; what did your father do? HELP! Mal where are you?

[Stephen Whiteside]

My father was a doctor, Heather, a specialist - haematologist. Essentially, he was a leukaemia doctor. It was tough work. The hours were long, and most of his patients were young adults, and they died.

I had one uncle on each side of the family, and they were both doctors also (an obstetrician and a GP), and then I had older cousins on both sides of the family who also studied Medicine. I guess you could say I was born into the trade!

I was studying to be a paediatrician (that's children, not feet!) for a while, but I wasn't happy, and realised it would leave me little time for writing - so I dropped out and became a GP!

[warooa]

Yes I agree Neville, Gough's words are poetry.

What's it called, Doc, if you specialize in children's feet?

Marty

[Stephen Whiteside]

I suppose you could be a paediatric podiatrist - with a purple pom pom, perhaps?

[Stephen Whiteside]

Pretty probable. Prophylaxis against punishment.