It was brilliant to read last week at both Rogue Strands in London and at the Cheltenham Poetry Festival (thanks to Anna Saunders for the invite to the latter), to see old and new faces, to read to over seventy people in all, and to shift 15 books. Poetry is alive and kicking out there in the wild...!
I've got two readings in the coming days, and I'd be delighted if any readers of Rogue Strands could come along and say hello!
First off, I'll be reading at our Rogue Strands event in London on 23rd April (at The Devereux, which is an ace venue). It's free entry, kicking off at 7 p.m..Poets from Carcanet, Red Squirrel, New Walk, Tall Lighthouse and HappenStance for your delectation. Rebecca Farmer, Paul Stephenson, Christopher Horton, Suzanna Fitzpatrick, Mat Riches and myself. All champing at the bit, all raring to read for you, all gagging to gallop to the bar (speaking for Mat and myself, at least)!
And then on 25th April, I'll be reading at the Cheltenham Poetry Festival alongside Chris Hemingway, Ardith Brown and Taz Rahman. This event also starts at 7 p.m. and is ticketed (get hold of yours via this link). Having read there twice in the past, at Buzzwords and at Poetry Café Refreshed, I know full well that Cheltenham is a veritable poetry hotbed, so I'm delighted to be returning and hope to see a whole host of new and old faces...!
Right now, the Elephant in the Poetry Publishing Room
isn’t funding, which is eternally being debated. No, there’s another issue that
very few poetry publishers are prepared to discuss in public, and that’s the
collapse in sales of single-poet collections.
Those sales were already low, but they’re now pitiful.
And if you doubt the veracity of this statement, just take a trip over to the
official Companies House website and have a look at a few sets of poetry
publishers’ accounts. And read and weep.
Of course, amid the rush for that afore-mentioned
funding, most publishers are only too keen to bury their disastrous sales
figures. What’s more, if funding is what keeps their heads above water (rather
than actually shifting units), they have little motivation to tackle the
problem head-on. However, if we love books, it’s urgent that we should all
discuss the reasons why customers are turning their backs on poetry
collections, and then ask ourselves how we might turn things around.
First of all, what about those reasons? Well, to start
with, the fall-out from the pandemic is still being felt. Audiences at
festivals and in-person readings understandably remain lower than pre-Covid,
given the average age of attendees. Meanwhile, online readings don’t seem to
generate a similar level of interval and post-reading conversations between the
poet and members of the audience (and by extension, thus bring about far fewer
sales).
Moreover, the posting of free content on blogs,
websites and social media is undoubtedly a major issue. Faced with such an
abundance of riches, all available gratis, readers understandably wonder why
they should bother investing in books.
It feels like a fundamental shift has taken place, as
if the rules of the poetry publishing games have all changed, though most of
the players haven’t noticed yet (or aren’t making any public acknowledgement of
having done so). In this context, it’s especially important to assert the
poetry collection’s value as an object, as a sensory experience, as a physical
connection with the words that are printed on its pages, as an act of
communication that reaches far beyond a screen. As a consequence, production
values become even more important. The quality of the paper, of the cover
design, of the typesetting, fonts, all become something to savour, something
that lifts print-based poetry above a phone or tablet. That said, however, a
balance needs to be struck between these materials and the affordability of
collections, as sales are inevitably connected to retail prices.
And then there’s the permanent qualities of books
against the transient nature of the internet. As readers, if we don't buy, read
and treasure poetry collections, we'll be left with a random succession of
poems to be scrolled through for free on a screen, consumed and forgotten in
minutes.
This seems a pivotal moment for everyone involved
in the poetry world. Sales aren’t an issue that only affects publishers. By
extension, the problem also ripples out to poets and readers. Leaving aside the
policies of ACE, if we ourselves don’t take the bull by the horns, get
innovative in our poetic relationships and make an effort from all sides to
embrace the importance of print-based poetry collections, we’ll lose the huge
diversity of voices that are published every year in the U.K., in which case
we’ll have nobody but ourselves to blame…
