When I was chatting to my friend Mat Riches the other day, he reminded me of the comparisons and contrasts that we could make between the likes of George Kendrick (whose poetry was the focus of my latest essay on Wild Court) and the likes of Maggie O'Farrell (whose poems from the 1990s have featured recently on my Twitter feed).
If the former might fit into a category of forgotten poets, then the latter could well be included in a separate grouping for poets who forgot about poetry. In O'Farrell's case, she abandoned verse for prose in the shape of the novel, although she did so at a far earlier stage in her literary development than many others. However, I get the feeling this journey has been made by several well-established poets over the past few years, and I wonder about their motives: artistic, financial, size of canvas, readership...? Moreover, I don't often see them making a return trip. Or am I wrong...?
Sophie Hannah ("A GENIUS" - Poetry Review) was a Next Gen poet in 2005. Now she's an "Internationally Bestselling Author of Crime Fiction."
ReplyDeleteI used to go to the same student poetry meetings as Joseph O'Neill. Barack Obama said that his "Netherland" was "an excellent novel".
I wouldn't turn back if I were them.