Well, the ho-hum news is in. After apparently scouring the globe for the 50 best poems of the year, and with a super star list of judges, here is the shortlist. There are not really many well-known or established Irish or British poets here, and, frankly, few if any major Canadian or American poets either. Comparing this list to the Best American, Canadian or British anthologies, the level of quality and relevance is startling. The Montreal Poetry Prize needs to do a lot better in encouraging established, talented poets from across the English-speaking world to submit - and they probably need a better system of feeding poems to their main judge. It is a good idea, and hopefully, in time, will amount to something noteworthy.
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?
Comments
I don't understand your complaint about there not being enough 'established' poets, particularly if you haven't read the poems in question. You seem to be dismissing these people not on the strength of their poems but because they are not as famous as people like us.
I personally welcome an anthology that is more interested in the poetry than the personality. Wanting to foreground the poem rather than elevating mediocre poets with more talent for social networking than writing quality gear.
Congratulations on receiving your PhD. At this rate, you'll soon be joining 'Sir Motion' in the House of Lords!
Best wishes from Simon & Rusty
Also, remember that last year's National Poetry Competition winner, Paul Adrian, was an unknown. Not every well-known poet wins competitions. That's the beauty of them. Anyone can enter and possibly win.