It's not really any wonder that the world of poetry is small and polarised when the likes of Robin Robertson take every chance they get to trot out the same old grumpy-old-man bollocks moaning about 'Instagram poetry' and the avant-garde, is it?
There does seem to be a patter of grumpy poet outbursts lately (see also Sean O'Brien's eulogy for the death of left page-justification, and John Burnside's snippy piece for the New Statesmen's books of the year round up, for some wider context). It's really just a compressed version of something Don Paterson's harped on about before now, too, something about 'real' poetry steering a middle course between populist emotion and experimental obscurity.
My rule of thumb - and it's stood me in good stead - is to religiously avoid poets who think you can sum up the variegated and quarrelsome world of contemporary poetry in a single sentence in the midst of an off-the-cuff interview. It wouldn't rankle *quite* so egregiously if RR was writing poetry as exciting as 'Lunch Poems' or 'Nox' or 'Pamper Me to Hell and Back' or 'Don't Call Us Dead' or, frankly, anything other than his own work, but, you know, I don't see that happening any time soon.
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Hi Matt, hope you're well.
There does seem to be a patter of grumpy poet outbursts lately (see also Sean O'Brien's eulogy for the death of left page-justification, and John Burnside's snippy piece for the New Statesmen's books of the year round up, for some wider context). It's really just a compressed version of something Don Paterson's harped on about before now, too, something about 'real' poetry steering a middle course between populist emotion and experimental obscurity.
My rule of thumb - and it's stood me in good stead - is to religiously avoid poets who think you can sum up the variegated and quarrelsome world of contemporary poetry in a single sentence in the midst of an off-the-cuff interview. It wouldn't rankle *quite* so egregiously if RR was writing poetry as exciting as 'Lunch Poems' or 'Nox' or 'Pamper Me to Hell and Back' or 'Don't Call Us Dead' or, frankly, anything other than his own work, but, you know, I don't see that happening any time soon.
Simon @ G&P
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