[Mark McDonnell]

John, (and anyone else who wants to listen…ha!)

I don't think anyone, even those cheering this award, are arguing that Bob Dylan is a great 'page' poet. But what he does, at its best, is clearly poetry, from someone with a very individual voice. The songwriters you mention are all brilliant: there's nothing wittier or more joyous to hear than 'Anything Goes' (especially sung by Porter himself) even if half the references to specific socialites and '30s Hollywood require a fairly arcane knowledge of the times.

But they are all writing the songwriter's equivalent of light verse.

Dylan did something different and unprecedented: an attempt to marry influences from more 'serious' poetry with popular song. He started as a 50s rock n roll singer in his teens and, through self-discovery and a magpie's instict, brought to a wide audience (in the important first 15 years of his career) the American and European folk song tradition, caustic political polemic, surrealism and symbolism, Beat poetry, modernism, Blakean apocalyptic visions and a new confessional complexity to the 'love song', that had a huge impact on a generation.

He did all this, not with the best poetry ever written (or even close, maybe), but with words (poetry, of course it is!) that were strong and distinctive enough to make millions sit up and listen, and with the alchemy of combining these words with an arresting stage presence, a mystique, and hugely powerful music. And he was damn funny and sexy when he was young!

I wasn't one of this generation, being a 44 year old whippersnapper, so this isn't baby boomer nostalgia. But I became a huge fan in my teens and still am. And no amount of griping will convince me he doesn't deserve recognition. Whether he deserves the Nobel Prize I have no idea, but that to me seems a side issue to the tired arguments that are being re-treaded here. It would be sheer churlishness to deny that Bob Dylan has been anything other than a force for good in the spread of poetry appreciation in the last 50 years, even if only as a catalyst to the discovery of 'better' things. I can't think of anyone who's done more.