The news that the severe arts-funding cuts of the Tory-led British government have led to the Poetry Book Society (established by the Arts Council in 1953 by TS Eliot) losing all its funding have set up howls of rage and surprise from Britain's best and brightest poetry lovers. Meanwhile, same perplexed poets have noted on Facebook, with something akin to rebel-Libyan rage, that commercial behemoth Faber and Faber have been given £40,000.
There is an irony here - the PBS is about as establishment as one can get in British poetry - it awards the TS Eliot Prize that often goes to Faber poets (Walcott this year for instance), and which, if any organisation does, brings poetry to "poetry lovers" in the UK. I don't belong to the organisation, for reasons that it would seem mean-spirited to mention now - one doesn't kick a horse when it is down, unless one wants to upset a philosopher. Yet, I think it is a part of the landscape one wouldn't want to see go. Like selling off all the forests, this doesn't make sense. It really is a total slap in the face, and confirms that, in secular Britain, after religion goes, next is poetry.
There is an irony here - the PBS is about as establishment as one can get in British poetry - it awards the TS Eliot Prize that often goes to Faber poets (Walcott this year for instance), and which, if any organisation does, brings poetry to "poetry lovers" in the UK. I don't belong to the organisation, for reasons that it would seem mean-spirited to mention now - one doesn't kick a horse when it is down, unless one wants to upset a philosopher. Yet, I think it is a part of the landscape one wouldn't want to see go. Like selling off all the forests, this doesn't make sense. It really is a total slap in the face, and confirms that, in secular Britain, after religion goes, next is poetry.
Comments
Take no notice of me mate, I am just buzzing off the change in tenor from last night, noting you've been on a roll satire-wise, and this struck into me the urge to extemporise in response and waffle somewhat, as I sit here after just getting out the scratcher, wondering on the sad facts in this servile art that propel one so, Toddy larghhh!!
Anyway, take no notice of this, don't publish it, as I am only writing to offer my thoughts on the bit of editing you've done in the 12 hours or so since this post appeared.
I didn't copy and paste the original and so can't be accurate in respect of quoting you, but the original version made a far more powerful impression on me than this truncated one.
To the outsider non in-crowd reader who will not be giving a flying turd about the micro-politics of this venal art called barding-about, pretending we know what language is and creating ditties and doggerel in the name of ACE, as in ace, as in doing it for the love of lingo and being good at it, as in being original and interesting with the choices we make when combining words into summat better than our peers; the original version makes, I am pretty sure, a far more memorable impression.
The original has greater gravity. And I am not taking the mick on this, it's just that I am like you, in the sense of doing my own thing, having a more well developed poetic instinct than most, because , like you I've followed my own note and not been an 'excellent' mug in the UK poet-sheeple crowd, who timidly hide 'emselves, oohin and ahing in all the right places as a way of selling out before they begin, kissing the right ass.
Anyway, keep up the good work, your one of the few outsiders who do stick it to the oh so terribly self-important UK po-biz know-alls and I just thought I'd let you know, coz I've gone with my instinct, thinking my post had an effect on your thinking.
Far be it from me to tell you what to publish, but your original truth-telling made much more of an impact on me as an objective, normal reader uninvolved in the UK po-biz nonsense, than this milder version.
Cheers
Kevin Desmond English MacNichols Masterson Prendergast Swords, six names from eight in one's derbfine, that we bards knew all about in our 12 year training from foclo to ollamh..
Don't worry, Dave Wheatley got reams of this kind of chat from me in 2008 when I imagined I was going from cli to anruth, and I think he got the sense I am genuine in being a true lover of the bardic arts. My ars poetica..
gra agus siochain