In a post the other day I mentioned the problematic fourth plinth at Trafalgar Square, and it set me to thinking. The way forward, I believe, is to build some more plinths. I suggest six. These would then be the fifth plinth, the sixth plinth, the seventh plinth, the eighth plinth, the ninth plinth, and the tenth plinth.
To concentrate on the problem of what should go on the fourth plinth, and on the remaining, new, six plinths, is, I think, a distraction. The plinths are enough in themselves. In short, we need to rethink our idea of plinths. We should start by discarding the old prejudice which has it that plinths are only bases on which more prestigious works of art may be displayed. We must reclaim plinths from the condescension of the art world.
Leave the plinths alone then? Is this what I'm suggesting? Stick with bald bare plinths? Not entirely. I believe they would be best celebrated, not with the adornment of concrete works of art, but with the word: with novels or poems. My reasoning, put simply, is that the glory of the plinth lies not so much in its materiality, but in the beauty of the word by which it signifies its plinthness. Without it, a plinth becomes a mere platform, a base - a block of stone. Armed with its rightful name, it becomes something special, something worthy of our honour: to wit, a plinth.
The Mayor of London, instead of commissioning tedious lumps of sculpture from the likes of Antony Gormley, should instead be offering a prize for the best novel titled "The Fourth Plinth". I envisage it as a tightly-plotted murder mystery set in the seamy underworld of the Edwardian West End, but of course I wouldn't want to insist on that. Artistic freedom, plinth-wise, should be paramount.
Perhaps a novel is too much though. Novelists are notoriously difficult to direct, like cats. Poets however, the, um, dogs of the literary world (I'm not sure about this cats-dogs conceit, to be honest), are used to coming up with something on demand, like the poet laureate on the joyous occasion of a royal wedding. You could have a separate competitiion for each plinth. Or could there be a poet, a modern-day Dante or Pound, with the strength of vision to produce a series of plinth poems? "The Fourth Plinth", "The Fifth Plinth", or - more poetical, perhaps? - "Plinth the Fourth", Plinth the Fifth", and so on up to "Plinth the Tenth". What depths, what breadths, what lengths, what widths such a series of poems could aspire to!
The winning poems could be inscribed on the side of the plinths. There would be ceremonial unveilings. Boris Johnson would read them out, as flash bulbs popped. Thus, "The Tenth Plinth":
The blank plinth limns the lines of its conceit
casting the dimmed limp pith of its wealth
into the depth of its brief surcease.
Tenth?
Or can time tempt the tide of perfidy, enough to ask,
what of the ninth?
That it may, by dint of the ceaseless breath of its richness catch,
in the full-moonness of a September night,
the brief purchase of a moment's death
which heralds not the heart's bliss
but,
insistent on the list that kills the sport,
spills the birth of the lisping prince who,
with the first breath of a limpid dawn,
splits the fourth line,
and, with the infamous birth of wrath, cries
"filth!"...
Well, just a first draft, you know. My poetic muse has, sadly, rusted over since the heady days of winning the Howe Junior Verse Prize at school. Still, if there's one subject guaranteed to get the poetic juices flowing, surely it's plinths.