In The Guardian, on Saturday, Don Paterson wrote about how older poet-editors need to speak with poets in their 20s, to keep up with the new poetic styles - agreed. He also discussed the roots of the new Picador Poetry Prize. He was careful to position the prize in the lineage of the Yale series of poets. While it is in that lineage, there are far more recent and obvious precedents, and it is telling that these were rather notably overlooked. The first is the Crashaw Prize, which Salt has successfully run the last few years. But, more to the point, there is the general American experience of publishing, where almost every debut collection at every credible poetry publisher is adjudicated on in a prize setting. I just wanted to mention this, because while the nascent Picador Prize may wish to bask in the glow of the Yale series, it really is the nothing new. A fine venture from one of the major places to find mainstream, excellent BILP - British-Irish Lyric Poetry - but not an original endeavour in the least. Then again, as Paterson has been wont to argue, The New in Poetry is rather besides the point, and Tradition is equally valuable.
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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In my more than twenty years experience, far from welcoming new and struggling poets, the British Poetry Establishment usually goes out of its way to suppress and silence them. The reason for this is that they are a classic vested interest, forever scratching each others' backs and covering their own arses.
Best wishes from Simon
Forgive my constant moaning on this subject on behalf of Anglophone poets living outside of Anglophone countries. Whatever commercial considerations publishers may have when they restrict entry in this way, it clearly reduces the notion of who poets worth reading might be to those who easily fit into a simple category in terms of identity.
Political science has a word for this: Nationalism.
I hope that if the Faber New Poets scheme returns, it will be an open submission process where anyone can enter. It doesn't seem very fair to use scouts that seem to favour MA courses and poetry publications that not many young poets are featured in.