Skip to main content

The Writers Handbook 2011

The Writers Handbook is an invalauble source for British-based writers and poets, and I have most of its issues for the last decade. 2011 is quite a departure - at least in one way.  Chris Hamilton-Emery's poetry section provides an extraordinary list of the ten best things in poetry of the "noughties" - which I found somewhat eyebrow-raising, to be sure.

Among the people and events and developments selected as the most important of the last decade are Andrew Motion, for being a great poet laureate (which he was); a key figure at Faber & Faber; and Keston Sutherland - the only poet singled out as such - for all he has done and does, etc.  Also mentioned are the publishers Salt and Shearsman, and the appearance of digital networking communities.

The article goes on to predict that in "ten years" there will not be much in the way of printed books of poetry, in the UK, and they will not be sold or marketed in "bricks and mortar" ways.  Instead, almost all poets will self-publish in digital formats - he predicts there may even be a Don Paterson Inc. - and seek audiences of mutual aesthetic interest.  Poems, not poetry collections, will be bought or acquired, and in fact, most ebooks will be free.

Hamilton-Emery was not the only evangelist for digital and online poetry - I was, along with many others.  Dan Mitchell and I started the first Facebook Poetry group, for example, and now have over 22,000 members. So I feel I can add to this debate. I think his article is wrong, in some ways, though correct in others, though it is a bit dramatic.

Luke Kennard seems to be more influential on his generation than Sutherland, who, though brilliant, has not had the same aesthetic impact on how most young British poets actually write.  Giles Goodland is a more intriguing hybrid poet, anyway.  Or Tom Chivers.  Roddy Lumsden has done more than Sutherland as editor and mentor to shape the current climate.

More to the point, I don't think poetry books (printed) will disappear in ten years.  I think ebooks will be part of the market, but people who love poetry will continue to want collections.  I think poetry is a strange market, to be sure.  Faber had 80% of the UK market in 2000 - has that changed?

To my mind, the five most important developments in poetry of the last decade in the UK were:

1. The rise of Facebook, Myspace, and digital networking and electronic dissemination of poetry;
2. Post 9/11, the rise of a new politicisation of poetry, and interest in eco-poetics, and consequent return of an art-for-art alternative;
3. The YBP wave, heralded and supported by a new respect for pamphlets, and Creative Writing MAs in Britain;
4. A rise in hybrid/ fusion poetics that avoid the us-and-them divides of mainstream-experimental
5. Fiona Sampson as editor of Poetry Review

I do agree that the death of Michael Donaghy was galvanising and important, as was the death of Mick Imlah, an equally talented poet, and the Bloodaxe anthologies have done a great service to new readers of poetry.  Hopefully, this list of his will get people talking.  But for someone who sells books, it is worrying to hear the looming demise of the physical print book being tolled so soon.  Hold them bells!

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

CLIVE WILMER'S THOM GUNN SELECTED POEMS IS A MUST-READ

THAT HANDSOME MAN  A PERSONAL BRIEF REVIEW BY TODD SWIFT I could lie and claim Larkin, Yeats , or Dylan Thomas most excited me as a young poet, or even Pound or FT Prince - but the truth be told, it was Thom Gunn I first and most loved when I was young. Precisely, I fell in love with his first two collections, written under a formalist, Elizabethan ( Fulke Greville mainly), Yvor Winters triad of influences - uniquely fused with an interest in homerotica, pop culture ( Brando, Elvis , motorcycles). His best poem 'On The Move' is oddly presented here without the quote that began it usually - Man, you gotta go - which I loved. Gunn was - and remains - so thrilling, to me at least, because so odd. His elegance, poise, and intelligence is all about display, about surface - but the surface of a panther, who ripples with strength beneath the skin. With Gunn, you dressed to have sex. Or so I thought.  Because I was queer (I maintain the right to lay claim to that

IQ AND THE POETS - ARE YOU SMART?

When you open your mouth to speak, are you smart?  A funny question from a great song, but also, a good one, when it comes to poets, and poetry. We tend to have a very ambiguous view of intelligence in poetry, one that I'd say is dysfunctional.  Basically, it goes like this: once you are safely dead, it no longer matters how smart you were.  For instance, Auden was smarter than Yeats , but most would still say Yeats is the finer poet; Eliot is clearly highly intelligent, but how much of Larkin 's work required a high IQ?  Meanwhile, poets while alive tend to be celebrated if they are deemed intelligent: Anne Carson, Geoffrey Hill , and Jorie Graham , are all, clearly, very intelligent people, aside from their work as poets.  But who reads Marianne Moore now, or Robert Lowell , smart poets? Or, Pound ?  How smart could Pound be with his madcap views? Less intelligent poets are often more popular.  John Betjeman was not a very smart poet, per se.  What do I mean by smart?

"I have crossed oceans of time to find you..."

In terms of great films about, and of, love, we have Vertigo, In The Mood for Love , and Casablanca , Doctor Zhivago , An Officer and a Gentleman , at the apex; as well as odder, more troubling versions, such as Sophie's Choice and  Silence of the Lambs .  I think my favourite remains Bram Stoker's Dracula , with the great immortal line "I have crossed oceans of time to find you...".