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Reports of Poetry's Health Are Greatly Exaggerated

Truth lies between.

Between extremes, that is. Poetry is not dead - and when the media says it is, they are turning over sod on an old grave. However, irrational exuberance does no one any good, in the marketplace (even of ideas), either. There's a consensus building among some quarters in British poetry that Poetry Is Truly Popular! The argument then goes something like this: if We Only Knew How To Connect With Poetry's Hungry, Tech-Literate Masses, We Could Sell Oodles Of Poetry Items.

As my grandfather Ian Hume used to say - come off the roof! The truth is, there is a groundswell of optimism, and a sense of new possibilities, as a new generation of younger poets takes hold of the various means of production and distribution that the new media afford them - much as the photocopying and lithograph moment of the 60s and 70s allowed for the British Poetry Revival (duly crushed by the big publishers and mainstream critics, so the story goes). However, this undeniably thrilling rise of several hundred younger poets, and performers, and Internet impresarios and editors, does not a revolution - or a mass audience - make. Having worked with American slam and spoken word artists in the 90s, when that was a truly popular American art form, I can attest to how seeming popularity and interest rarely translates into the cash register's ching-ching.

In fact, take a look at Facebook. I admin a Poetry group, and it has over 2,400 members. This all sounds promising. But groups with names like "When I Get A Million Members I Will Punch An Astronaut" have 180,000 members, and soaring. Facebook is the viral method of the moment - and a useful barometer. Even in its wildly contagious, and viral form, Poetry and Poets tend to get a smaller percentage of members, than almost any other topic, theme or subject, under the sun.

Poetry is an art, with elements it takes time to truly appreciate, even understand; it has complexity, and formal style, and does not merely appeal to the heart, or the funnybone - it also appeals to the mind or soul - it requires that people who engage with it, work at it. Maybe not puzzling out work - but a work of attention, and seriousness, none the less. Poetry that is any good cannot merely be entertainment, whereas great movies and songs can be, because that is partly their genre's remit. Poetry asks of us, and yields as much as we give it.

Poetry rarely connects directly with the audience of its day - and the poetry that does, tends to be rubbish later on. Kipling diminishes in our estimation; Walter de la Mare more so. Poets barely read while alive (poor Whitman, who published his own books) and Hopkins prove this. The Georgian Moment had its tub-thumping publishers, like Marsh, and Monro, who managed to sell anthologies to tens of thousands of people (as I have done with Oxfam, as Bloodaxe does, as Salt does). However, novels sold far more widely - and still do.

Poetry is a minority interest, like chess, or mathematics, or philosophy. It is a noble, vital, and necessary part of human life - but it can no longer claim a central role. It appeals, generally, to the young, and the older - those filled either with enthusiasm and energy, or those with time on their hands, to reflect on timeless emotions and thoughts. Those in their middle years - busy parents, engineers, pilots, ad executives, accountants, violinists, etc. - less so. Time is priceless, and people prefer to spend their time, more and more, on other things - downloading films, music, or what have you. There may be harm and sadness in this - the idea that Poetry saves lives, and heals all is lovely, but unfounded (most poets do not enjoy much fruit from the Poetry Tree). However, it seems truer than claiming Poetry, like Destry, Rides Again!

I am glad publishers want to promote, and publish, good young poets. Salt, for instance, has published ten or twelve poets, recently, who should have had books out years ago, and in a less restricted and old-fashioned environment, would have had. Small dynamic UK presses can make an impact now, in the next few years, because there has been an extraordinary logjam. Publishing younger poets, though, before they have fully formed their own poetic, or sense of poetry, does no one any good, in the long run. If everyone gets published, no one does, because publication becomes virtually meaningless. Wearing shoes is no longer a noteworthy event in London, because it is so commonplace.

The idea that everyone will be a poet on their blog, or Facebook group, in the future, renders poetry banal, trivial, easy, and ultimately boring. Poetry is not a new dance craze, or the latest pop song. It is not a fashion - though poets and poetic styles go in and out of fashion. Poetry is an age old, ever-reviving, art of great beauty, power, and worth. It needs a thoughtful husbandry, unless it is to become wanton. Salesmen may claim poetry is more alive than ever, but they may be more likely singing of the death of Aesop's goose. Golden eggs of the sun, silver eggs of the moon.

Comments

i cannot disagree with you Swift.

and as yesterdays post proved, honesty is always more eloquent than unvocalised political naggings which when voiced, cast a different shade on things than the official versions a publisher may wish to propogate about what drives their sidhe..

if you look at the publishers now, particularly Astley, we see that the great rebels of the seventies and eighties now controlling things -- a very small pool of white middle class middle aged men with patronage power -- are all assimilated into the status quo, after a youth of high jinks and winging things on shoestring budgets, as Astley fascinatingly describes in the new Live book of the stars in his stable..


The think about UK poetry, Live poetry, in the main, is it is either rhyming doggerel comedy, or bland lyric poetry in which the first person poet I, is dominant throughout, imitating the now safe as (sir perhaps?) Armitage, who seems to be the model everyone follows.

Write about a chav weekend experience, rant a bit, toss in a few f.cks, c.unts etc, and call it the hot new vibe of the oppressed poet -- usually with a state supported job as poet in residence of and number of gaffes from chip shop, prison or telephone box, to Art galleries...


The new voices who are doing something original, trying to create a voice which shakes up Society into questioning at the deepest level -- whilst UK poets (in england) are all for raving about how Milton or some other dangerous mind was blah blah..


When presented with a simialr voice calling for clear and radical change for the working class, of the Human majority in the UK, without the access to feeling good about themself a king Liam or prince terry slotter has -- the life long taking for granted that millions go the way on a person by dint of birth (blatantly unfair) -- poets in the UK, do not want to know, same as the conservative party do not want to answer questions of Dave's policy of devolving police and justice to Stormant -- as i found out when i asked them.

Silence, the indicator that you have hit the real proofs that bland ad-speak and Love parade vibe publishing companies run by one man's Mind, do not address: this i think says far more about the real undercurrent, poetic thinking..

Basically the stuff i read in Magma, is bland and the I, hollow posturings of the mind into loose poetical flight, but the higher strain that effects Intellectual discourse which gets beyond the political desire of us as single humans intriguing with one another to get star billing, i am not reading..

The poets in the UK seem to re-act to social forces, rather than set the debate up, and this coupled with the general bland state, confused, the working class poets doing little more than pouting defiance, but we know they will bend the knee and take Sir and Ma'rm, most of them...at least that;s the impression i get, that poetry now has a lot of angry men and women, all taking bollix about the Art, yet wedded wholly into the Commercial to the extent, that to find a poet not in the pocket of one of these men, is rare indeed..

you are the only one, who is just being yrself and are paying the price for it, of silly power games...


perhaps the ppl who think they have the net sown up, in the longer run, the poets who held out and did not ruch in, but concentrated on the craft itself, will rise..popularity is a sign of what? huddles and cliques with bossers whose ego takes centre stage or they take out their mental illness on us, appalled bores getting arsey coz others do not think they are TS Eliot, poor lambs.. happy daze..

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