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Barker Bites

Sebastian Barker, who was editor of The London Magazine over 34 issues for six years, before the Arts Council cut its funding, has had a potent, and pointed, letter published in the latest issue of The Rialto, Number 64, one of the UK's leading poetry magazines. Barker argues that "the Arts Council has lost its way", because it seems to be, in his view, run by "blindfolded" civil servants and co., with little or no appreciation for poetic history. He also condemns "some of those in our prize culture (cabals awarding themselves the prizes), who by this means bring about a degradation of talent." Eyewear thinks this is perceptive. There's been a bottleneck at the top of the prize structure recently, in Britain, which is not accurately reflective of the broad and deep poetic talent at work currently in the UK.

Michael Mackmin (the editor of the magazine) observes in the same issue, "when I saw that the Scottish Laureate Edwin Morgan was on the shortlist [for the TS Eliot Prize] I did more than half hope that the TS Eliot judges might give him the money - a very useful recognition of his long lifetime cheering poetry along."

It is almost a scandal that a great and needful genius such as Morgan was deprived of the Eliot award (though he has since won the biggest Scottish book award for the same book). Poets need to become aware that more and more public scrutiny (especially when public money is at stake) will be directed on them, so that, at all times, their ethical, and critical, faculties must rise to the occasion.

Eyewear is sometimes thought of as beyond the pale - outragously commenting on things best left unsaid. But poetry is not a family secret that has to be kept in the attic. It is a public art, and needs to be upstanding and transparent about its business. When poet-editors with the integrity, and talent, of Barker, and Mackmin begin to write like this, it may be time for other brave people to speak out. To change things.

Comments

Behind barker's *arts council* the reality is you know Swift, ppl.

And the ppl dishing out the dough, from what i hear, have started backing Live poetry over static printed verse, proven in the funding breakdown for the last few yrs which reveal a huge swing away from one camp, and into another.

It is only natural Barker would rabt against this. There seems to have been a prick of clarity for the very first time online, between the -- what are shaping up to be -- primary protagonists of the post GB era.

As we enter 2009, and in three from now, it may be prescient to ask...what Vision of poetry will be live in the newer net consciousness of brand new online turf to WaR over -- write a recital territories and DIY garage geeks of a post-noughtie punk Poetic responsible for the Voice/s who are using the net as what 2005 Kavanagh recipient Dave Lordan terms as a place to *dump* the blather; as surely the truth is, Eloquence is the proof of poetic success.


Simply put, new ppl with deeper commitment and clearer focus on what path of study to pursue in the new DIY class setup the net offers anyone with reasonable intellectual skills. All one needs to become a poet, a brain and imagination, coupled to a heart and instinct.


Now, anyone can study anything, and the very fabric of communication is changing, which means -- for camp A who desire positive change through the medium of poetry, upon their mind and person alone, first: - the opportunity to learn on one's own terms;


...to camp B, who represent the status quo of print centric ppl -- the world has gone appallingly bonkers.

carol rumens on the guardian blokes blog, the nominal paid *expert*, refuses to accept the poetic validity of online only practitioners, and this is a non negotiable conviction she holds, and refuses to discuss.

i personally believe this is because she is unable to defend her position, because currently, poetry in the uk is so mired in who's who and a network of relationships in which the worst one can do, is speak of the commercial family secret, the cash aspect.

Appalling was de riguer last week. bummie in the fire gaffe and claire armistead, the culturally privileged and well paid manly vixen literary editor of the blokes blog, used it four times in her main grandstand piece in which she failed to convince anyone she was an intellectual in any real sense..


...and this is the meat and two veg of it...the real voice is very difficult to develop in the uk, as Bill Griffiths knew, and notice that as soon as Bill passed over, a collective blip of good will, bill's passing the backwash to a united apprehension, that a real specimen had left the mortal plane...


This capacity to ignore the real specimens until they are dead, and accord to the increasingly corporate bound poets, the frothy baubles and gong rep activities which -- in the crazy world of poetic reality - can set up a total arrogant duffer with several yrs of hyped attention and utterly laughable predictions on *his* (even the women poets refer to the generic Poet as *he*, doh) future staus as the next...whoever, but i reckon that incredibly intricate periods of intellectual assembly of one's public texts, which adhere to some greater fixed and thought out masterplan of making any one of us; the next great Hope; all of us can waffle into blur, and some bluffers in the poetry world get by on anything but the writing of it (not you swift, i have always been yr number one fawn)


i know ppl who talk loads and act important in the flesh, coz they have a good number promoting poetry, and fair play as i wouldn't say no to a cushy number talking about poetry, and which i have anyway, and do for free -- which means nothing except, money is the leaast of my considerations when writing, as i am lucky enough to be able to do it all day, online..


and getting eloquent is down to word count, the deepest pearls of verse, in Yeats at least, came last, and this is the best we can pray and work towards, every yr measured and a mask, unity of being, gyre of our inner gyroscopic instinct, to out whatever force of Creation causes the hand to wrought the flashes of our mind into the order of its utterance...

...i predict that they who work hardest longest, who stay happy and are rewarded in a competition with Self to govern one's tongue, and act poetical in print, proved to thine own eye first, as the truth is, the world of poetry is a microcosm of the wider Human world..


...all sorts ion it, for as many reasons as members of the guild, and so when carol rumens and her old school jollies on the way out, already done and dusted, the intellectual provings, over a lengthy period of interactive spankings, the real underlying chance of any amazingly different, self assured, fully trained bards coming out of any of the regions, apart, are slim...the live literature attempt to misbrand what is clearly Live Poetry, for only the reason of jealousy of the maker whose mind alerted us to the simple plain fact of our native british brehon poetic..


...as proved by rumens and the blokes blog ficks. i spent 18 months there, aoing a few thousand words a a day, often five and four, but every day, and many thought i was mad, but the text itself, was totally inoffensive, or inventive, and often utter shite, but purely on the word count, even the best five percent of it, would be a few hundred pages, and i learned this way...


took a chance because i was not tied to anyone, and trusted my instinct, as by the time i finished my training on the guardian, i already had six years of practice and was confident my hunch was right, and it was...

from master of nothing to one's own mind in seven yrs, is normal bardic practice and anyway, keep it up, Live poetry, grow up UK, accept me for who i am, the s/he who needs donations of cash, get spending on my angle..gra agus siochainn
Jon Stone said…
Complete the sentence:

"When poet-editors with the integrity, and talent, of Barker, and Mackmin begin to write like this ..."

It may be because one of them's just had his funding cut?

Isn't this just the same kind of standard anti-establishment rant that someone even lower down the pecking order - me, for example - could well direct at Barker himself in exactly the same terms, only to face certain derision for having such an obviously skewed viewpoint?
Alison said…
I think one problem with the present prize structure is the emphasis on current collections.

We need a well-publicised "lifetime" award to recognise (and publicise) the achievement of writers such as the marvellous Edwin Morgan. I keep noticing these cropping up in the music world - they're a very good idea.

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