In architecture, and in plastic arts such as painting and design, Britain leads the world, in innovation - and high-profile, and controversial - prizes, often connected to handsome cash payouts. The Turner Prize is a leading example. Critics of these prizes tend to argue the gongs and nods go to the more experimental, cutting-edge, and contemporary practitioners - and not those who support more traditional, even outdated, modes. Not so in the British poetry world, where the key prizes - TS Eliot, Forward, and Costa spring to mind - are almost always given to good, traditional, mainstream poets. In otherwords, and perhaps paradoxically, it is the innovators who tend to be excluded. Now, I am sure these innovative writers likely don't ask their presses (Barque, say, or Reality Street) to submit their work, all the time - and there is a legitimate oppositional tendency among the experimentalists that would, I think, tend to recommend against the giving of such awards - however, as The Griffin in Canada evidences - it is possible to have a popular, rich prize that also recognises literary pioneering. What would such a prize be called? How about "The Bunting"? Time to start seeking sponsors.
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
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There is another argument in favour of saying that literary prizes dominate in a critical vacuum. The alternative poetries in this country operate in anything but a critical vacuum - creating, as the modernists did before them, the means by which their work can be appreciated - whereas the mainstream do not have theory in their favour, only press coverage and awards. Aesthetics reduced to measurable commercial success. But that's a matter for an entirely different post, I think.
BTW, though I like 'The Bunting' as a possible name, but prefer 'Cobbing': 'He had three Cobbings under his belt before he was forty'; 'Did you hear? Denise Riley just bagged a Cobbing?' See? Sounds fantastic.
Simon Turner, Gists and Piths
The funniest one was Sinead Morrisey winning the PS prize of 5 large, picked by her publisher.
Personally i think prizes are a side show. important for the economic health of poets who are lucky enough to win them, but now it is like the education policies in the uk. the career route is send a manuscript to a person who icks you, for any number of reasons, not just the strength of one's verse, human nature suggests; then they pump you up before you have learned yr trade and the poet gets feted as the next messiah.
Everyone wants to be a prize winning poet, but essentially it just means such a one chose you, and beyond that, the poetry itself does the impressing of the plebs who are not poets themselves. our public.
M
'Did you hear? Denise Riley just bagged a Silly?'
'Wow. How many Sillies does she have now?'
'Not as many as Monk.'
Another possible would be the Armantrout (or The Trout):
'I hear Riley hooked another Trout.'
Has a ring to it, no?
An alternative prize would, in some regards, be like the nuclear power option: perhaps a good short term solution, but ultimately damaging in the long-run. Ideally, a critical environment where the TLS and the Guardian Review gave equal coverage - or, indeed, any coverage at all - to less mainstream poets would (hopefully) pave the way for a prize giving culture where John James or Maggie O'Sullivan would be just as likely to win the Forward as Carol Ann Duffy or Don Paterson. That could be hopelessly idealistic and utopian, however, but I live in hope.
Oh, and it's gotta be the Trout: the Trout is fantastic.
Simon Turner, Gists and Piths