Skip to main content

What We Need In Britain Is A Poetry Tax

For too long, British (and Irish) poets have lived high off the hog.  Sir Andrew Motion had bucketfuls of wine sent over from The Queen and swanned around in livery and finery bought from the fashion houses of London with the sweat of the working poor.  While alarm clock Britain has woken to the annoying beep-beep-beep or drone of a daily wake-up call, poets smelled coffee and roses through rose-coloured nostrils, and ritzy Ray-Bans.  Poets lie when they say they are poor; their deceit is tantamount to tax evasion.  Poets, for instance, get away with murder.

They seduce good-looking younger fans easily.  They sell their books at the drop of a hat.  They get their friends to review them.  Their friends give them six figure cash bailouts called prizes.  Poets are a cabal.  They freely move about the country, complaining about girls and death.  Poets have murdered the English-language, with what can only be called "poetic license".  Comparing apples and oranges makes fools of us all.  The poetry fat cats, North and South, publish beautiful hard-cover books, and then complain when we don't buy them.  They expect a living.  Poets sleep late, eat too much, drink too much, copulate regularly.  Broken Britain was snapped in two by Larkin, Hughes and Armitage - the Three Amigos.

Have you seen them swagger into your local?  Watch out, mate.  If Hughes is there, know your place.  I have seen Duffy in limos, paps on all sides, teetering on GaGa heels, wrapped in diamonds and raw meat.  I have heard rumours of O'Brien and the Swiss accounts.  There are rumours that Heaney knows where much of that 70 billion Euros went in Ireland.  Tax the poets now!  Bankers only get bonuses yearly, but every day is a bonus for these poets, junketing in Monte Carlo, or Iceland, or Dubai.  Want a high-class visitor?  Ask a poet.  Want some Peruvian marching powder?  Ask a poet.  Want to make a murder look like a suicide?  Ask a poet.  Want to turn a word into a trope?  Ask a poet.  Want to smuggle stolen goods out of the country by hiding them in hollowed-out volumes?  Ask a poet.

Have you seen those thick Bloodaxe Collecteds?  They hide things in there.  Poets are happier than us, because they are better-looking.  Their clothes are better.  Poets live in ways that novelists and industrialists can only dream about.  One day, when the British public finally see poetry on TV the way it really is, they will tear the whole damn house of cards down.  For now, we must rely on Clegg and Co. to again do the right thing.  It isn't enough to trim the fat at the NHS, the Arts Council, the Army, or the BBC.  Cut the lard off of Faber, Carcanet, Arc, Anvil, Seren, Bloodaxe, Picador, Cape, Salt, and all the other billionaire editors and publishers.  Hit them where it hurts - their bulging pockets.  Once we have taxed the lazy feckless poets of this proud archipelago (and the isles in which the quasi-associated Irish dwell) we'll be able to fund what this country really needs.

Comments

Nessa O'Mahony said…
Indeed, Todd - I was a little worried by your reference to Carol Ann Duffy's paps, until I realised you were talking about those chappies with cameras (weren't you?)

Happy 1st April

Nessa
Poetry Pleases! said…
Dear Todd

Who said that North Americans don't do irony? Having said that, I would be a bit perplexed to bump into Ted Hughes these days. Martin Amis once wrote a sardonic short story about poets being paid far more than novelists.

Best wishes from Simon
Unknown said…
Happy April Fools!
Anonymous said…
Didn't Wendy Cope do this? "Engineers' Corner".

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...".