FOR SHAME: THE CLOSURE OF A POETRY CHARITY IS A TRAGEDY

WE NEED TO BUY MORE POETRY BOOKS, LESS JUNK FOOD OF THE MIND

Here is a wake up call for British poets, and British society over-all - the closing down today of the Poetry Book Society charity (founded by TS Eliot and friends in 1953) is a cultural tragedy. The PBS was not without controversy, and some argued it favoured mainstream presses and poetry books over the avant-garde and the performance-oriented; but it did much to foster poetry reading nonetheless, and its aims were noble in the main.

It is hardly to be understood how a nation of tens of millions of university-educated readers cannot find time or money to keep alive a few fragile poetry organisations that form a bulwark against the general ignorance flooding in from the world of sensual-visual pleasures that roil about us. For shame! Put down your EL James, JK Rowlings, Lee Childs, and Dan Browns, and set aside a small penance for poetry. When a society's poetry organs wither, the head is ill. Yes, booklets and prizes have been harvested, shorn off for other bodies to run. But when a PBS goes, what is next?

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IQ AND THE POETS - ARE YOU SMART?

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....

Poetry vs. Literature

Poetry is, of course, a part of literature. But, increasingly, over the 20th century, it has become marginalised - and, famously, has less of an audience than "before". I think that, when one considers the sort of criticism levelled against Seamus Heaney and "mainstream poetry", by poet-critics like Jeffrey Side , one ought to see the wider context for poetry in the "Anglo-Saxon" world. This phrase was used by one of the UK's leading literary cultural figures, in a private conversation recently, when they spoke eloquently about the supremacy of "Anglo-Saxon novels" and their impressive command of narrative. My heart sank as I listened, for what became clear to me, in a flash, is that nothing has changed since Victorian England (for some in the literary establishment). Britain (now allied to America) and the English language with its marvellous fiction machine, still rule the waves. I personally find this an uncomfortable position - but when ...

"I have crossed oceans of time to find you..."

In terms of great films about, and of, love, we have Vertigo, In The Mood for Love , and Casablanca , Doctor Zhivago , An Officer and a Gentleman , at the apex; as well as odder, more troubling versions, such as Sophie's Choice and Silence of the Lambs . I think my favourite remains Bram Stoker's Dracula , with the great immortal line "I have crossed oceans of time to find you...".

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