Monday 22 January 2018

Artificial battle lines

And so yet again the poetry world is spoiling for an internal fight, aiming for civil war instead of forming a common front to take on the fact that millions of people ignore the genre’s existence.

Everything is kicking off on the back of an article titled The Cult of the Noble Amateur in PN Review. Written by Rebecca Watts, it dissects the poetry of Holly McNish and has provoked umpteen discussions on social media.

Artificial battle lines are being drawn (on this occasion spoken word vs written verse, accessibility vs elitism) rather than opportunities being taken. A huge new audience/readership for poetry has developed and is growing, day after day, thanks to the emergence of new ways of reaching people. This can only be positive for all poets, whatever their tastes. Moreover, major publishing houses are encountering new income streams and prominence on bookshop shelves for verse that will inevitably feed back in to all the poets on their list, whatever their aesthetic stance and method.

Here’s an analogy with the wine trade: many young people here in Extremadura drink lager. They find oak-aged red wine a step too far from beer. Over the past few years, a number of wineries (mine included) have brought out fresh, low-alcohol white wines that are aimed at this market. These white wines have taken off and become incredibly successful.

Right now, not only have we managed to wean a whole host of beer drinkers on to wine, growing the market, but more and more of these consumers are also starting to move on to the reds they used to eschew, using those whites as a stepping stone. Of course, a newly acquired taste for those oak-aged red wines doesn’t mean they should turn their noses up at the fresh white wines they used to drink. There’s a moment, a place and a mood for both.

4 comments:

  1. You make some good points, Matthew. But what's most troubling to me is that it seems increasingly evident that reviewers are not "allowed" to write negative reviews of poets who are also popular Internet personalities. I've seen plenty of evidence of that lately, on social media from both sides of the pond. (Conversely, some "reviews" which were little more than disgusting personal attacks have passed almost unremarked - because the poets in question were not popular Internet personalities, presumably.) It's just all making me a bit cynical.

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    1. Thanks for commenting, Clarissa. You're right in so many ways! Of course, this protecting of one's own via the internet isn't just limited to spoken word poetry. Networks of mentors and mentees are also ready to defend each other to the hilt, come what may!

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  2. Wonderful thoughtful article but , there is always but, as a poet who writes free form verse and does not always stick to grammatical rules, i find that the reviewers are in an awkward place, no one can know another's mind therefore it is unfair to expect glowing or even reviews at all, as for the divides between the those who see themselve's as artists in an elevated God like sense will always frown on the rest of us it is to be expected , knowing ignorance pervades our world , just like the last five percent pf bacteria that refuses to be shifted by dettol, but lets not dwell on it , all poetry has a place and all poets a place, as long as they write with passion and heart, lets not let the those who wish to ghettoize win.

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    1. Thanks for commenting, Gerard. Ghettoising is grim, isn't it? I do wish poets could work together to find more readers for the genre instead of squabbling among themselves!

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