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the more experimental, cutting-edge, and contemporary practitioners - and not those who support more traditional, even outdated, modes.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.
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?
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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