Over at Rogue Strands

I came across this post at Rogue Strands earlier – lovely to see fine poetry being published there, and to read about the forthcoming second Rogue Strands poetry evening, featuring Katy Evans-Bush, Ramona Herdman, Rory Waterman, Rishi Dastidar, Matthew Stewart and Mat Riches, on November 28th. I won't be able to get along there on this occasion, but I'll have to make sure I can some other time.

A week in poetry

I should have pointed out more clearly the other day that there have been lots of thoughtful responses in the blogosphere to the whole Paxman and poetry thing. Here are four excellent reads to enjoy over the weekend.

George Szirtes in The Guardian - lots of good points made, and even where I disagree with George, he doesn't claim that Paxman has no right to an opinion.

Katy Evans-Bush at Baroque In Hackney - typically considered take on things, and anyway you should always read any article that contains the phrase "pellety nest".

Jon Stone at Sidekick Books - very thought-provoking, and it's good to see someone suggesting positive steps to change the current situation.

Padraig Reidy at Index on Censorship - argues with some of George's points, but also gets right to the nub of why that response I mentioned the other day was such tosh.

My own position again?
1 I don't much like the whole 'ordinary people' thing, but I'd guess that Paxman was using it as shorthand for 'people who don't in the normal course of things buy or read poetry' - in a brief interview that doesn't seem unreasonable.

2 He has every right to make such comments. He'd have every right whether he was a judge or not. Provoking a bit of debate isn't a bad thing. It is a worry if it detracts attention from the actual chosen books, but there's plenty of time before the awards are made to focus on them.

3 He might have a point about failing to engage with people.

4 If he has, though, I think he's identified the wrong reasons for this. I think it has more to do with how hard it is to casually encounter poetry.

5 That's it.

Paxman and poetry

I've been rather tardy at updating here recently, but I'm determined to get back to it. Hopefully, the next few weeks on here will be largely celebratory (new Lee Harwood book, Mark Burnhope interview, Prole, Conor Jameson's new book), but let's get started with a good old-fashioned poetry dust-up.

Jeremy Paxman, one of the judges of the Forward Prize this year, has ventured the opinion that poets should start engaging with 'ordinary people'. On Facebook and Twitter, this has provoked a good deal of talk, some of which, as Jo Bell and Katy Evans-Bush have pointed out, does seem to rather back up his point. Why should it really be such a problem to have a 'non-poet' talking about poetry?

My main argument with it, I think, is not with the problem that Paxman identifies, but the reasons he suggests for that. I don't think it has a huge amount to do with the accessibility of the actual poems, with the often false separation of poetry into 'easy' and 'difficult' camps. I think it's more to do with another kind of accessibility, with the fact that it's hard to encounter poetry casually, these days. The odd newspaper or magazine publishes the odd occasional poem, and there are projects such as Poems On The Underground that attempt to get poetry in front of the public as they go about their everyday business, but frankly, there's not enough of it. When it does appear on TV or radio, it's generally in a niche of its own, rather than alongside other artforms.

I do have a slight problem with the whole idea of 'ordinary people', 'non-poets' and so on - aren't poets ordinary people, then? But that might be down to the way the papers have presented this. Paxman has obviously been asked to stir up interest in the Prize shortlist, and he's done it. In that respect, kudos to him. At least poetry's getting talked about on the news.

The one shame is that it's overshadowed the actual shortlist - scroll down to the bottom of that Guardian article to see it.

Poor Rude Lines

A couple of weeks ago John Field very kindly featured my poetry on his blog, Poor Rude Lines. That's more than a little flattering, given the many fine poets he writes about on there. I've been browsing through past posts this week, and particularly enjoyed what he had to say about Katy Evans-Bush's Me And The Dead. Have a look for yourself - this is thoughtful and thought-provoking writing by a sensitive, perceptive reader.

Indian summer

The end of summer (I, of course, consider that this coincides exactly with the end of the cricket season) is supposed to be a time of quiet melancholy. Leaves turning brown, evenings drawing in, a chill in the air. You know the routine.

So why did the weekend just gone feel like the diametric opposite (we'll ignore an England batting display of such breathtaking incompetence I had to double-check that our previously all-conquering heroes hadn't been replaced by a troupe of circus clowns. Or Australians)?

The first reason, on Friday night, was the launch of Salt's The Best British Poetry 2011 at the Betsey Trotwood, in London. Quite apart from anything else, it all ran like clockwork (due mainly to compere Roddy Lumsden), despite there being 30-odd readers to cram in. On top of that, it's a great book (I know, I know, I would say that, but you'll just have to believe me), and it's always good to get another perspective on a poem by hearing it read aloud. 

Favourites included Mike Bannister reading Satin Moth, Mark Burnhope (Twelve Steps Towards Better Despair), Oli Hazzard (Sonnet), Katherine Kilalea (Hennecker's Ditch), Chris MacCabe (Kingfisher), Kate Potts (Three Wishes), Jon Stone (Mustard), Chrissy Williams (Sheep) and Michael Zand (on a persian cairn), but there was much else to admire.

It was good to catch up with Mark Burnhope for a chat, too, having previously only 'met' him online, and nice to meet Giles Goodland again. Thinking about it, Giles didn't read his poem from the book, Waves. A shame, because it's one of my favourite two or three pieces in there. 

I can only admire the sheer energy and enthusiasm of Salt supremo Chris Hamilton-Emery, who was also present despite having just registered as a student at UEA. I bought a copy of another anthology, The Salt Book Of Younger Poets, and very good it is too. I'll be returning to it on here soon, with a detailed overview.

The second reason for feeling suddenly buoyant came the following morning, just around the corner at Exmouth Market, at the CB Editions Free Verse poetry book fair. I'm not sure exactly what I expected, but the sheer volume of people who came through the doors, and more importantly who bought books, was genuinely uplifting. 

Presses such as Arc, Shearsman, Enitharmon, Penned In The Margins, HappenStance, Donut, Carcanet, Reality Street and of course Nine Arches were all present (I think Jane Commane did pretty good business throughout), and as well as offering the opportunity to put faces to names, it was also a great chance to browse books that, however easy they might be to find on the internet, you'd never get a chance to try before you buy otherwise, unless you happened to go to a reading by the poet in question. 

I was reading along with fellow Nine Arches poet Ruth Larbey, who performed her work both very well, and entirely from memory, and managed to catch readings by Tom Jenks, and by HappenStance poets D A Prince, Clare Best, Jon Stone, Kirsten Irving, Peter Daniels and Lorna Dowell. Unfortunately I got next to no chance to talk to Helena Nelson, but that was a mark of how busy she was kept throughout the day, talking to customers and poets, so that can't be a bad thing.

And again, half the pleasure of such an event is meeting new people, seeing Facebook friends made real, and renewing old acquaintances. Step forward Simon Barraclough (I'd just bought his excellent limited edition Penned In The Margins pamphlet Bonjour Tetris, funnily enough), Katy Evans-Bush, Tim Love and Tom Chivers, among others. Other books I bought were Steve Spence's Limits Of Control, and Ross Sutherland's Twelve Nudes, both from Penned In the Margins, and both of which I've had my eye on for a while, plus Peter Riley's The Derbyshire Poems, and David Sergeant's Talk Like Galileo, both from Shearsman.

Perhaps it helped that it was a beautiful, balmy afternoon - my moods seem to be absurdly dependent on the weather - but as I made my way back to St Pancras, I felt more optimistic about the British poetry scene than I have for ages, this summer just gone having been a thoroughly difficult one. With poets, publishers and, most importantly, readers brought face to face, you were reminded of what's actually important (getting good poetry out there to be read), and of how much time and energy gets wasted drawing up binary or even balkanised models of the poetry world. Here's hoping CB Editions will take their fair around the UK.

NB. Coming soon on Polyolbion, I'll have interviews and poems from Mark Burnhope, Simon Barraclough and Isobel Dixon.

Coren meets his match

Oh look! That nice Giles Coren (yes, the sensitive soul whose weekends are ruined by sub-editors who don't get his hilarious jokes, but who can't tell a stressed syllable from an unstressed), is at it again. This time it's poetry he's on about.

What's most disappointing is that when, once or twice, he touches upon an interesting angle, he quickly buries it under a load of badly argued (or not argued at all) generalisations. There are the usual lame attempts at humour, and thinly disguised sneering at anyone not fortunate enough to have enjoyed his own advantages (the most notable of which was a father with the right contacts in the media).

You'll have noticed that Mr Coren really gets my goat, and I was quite ready to explode into furious blogging action. Fortunately, a few minutes browsing revealed that Katy Evans-Bush has already posted a far more temperate, thoughtful and characteristically elegant response (see how she's used a bit of context in there, Giles? Try it sometime.). My only argument with Katy might be her description of him as a journalist. He's a bloke who writes in a newspaper, and that's quite different, I reckon.

Still, that does point up one of the newspaper industry's main problems nowadays - the fact that very often, 'name' columnists are outshone by high-quality bloggers out there. Read back through Katy's blog over the last six months (or however long), and you get a real idea of the vibrancy, range and relevance of poetry (and all sorts of contemporary literature, for that matter). Read back through his columns, and you get a real idea of his one interest - Giles Coren - which is why, in the end, he equates his not giving a toss about poetry with everybody else being similarly indifferent.

STOP PRESS: Just noticed that the chaps at Gists & Piths have picked up on it too. The comments are excellent. I think Jane Holland's dead right to point out that people not caring about poetry (we'd probably differ on how many people, and how much) is what liberates it to do things that other artforms often can't (that's what I meant about him failing to develop the interesting angles). Alan Baker, too, points out the usual bizarre inconsistency in newspaper coverage of poetry (poetry is dead and rubbish / poetry is the new rock 'n' roll), and also says the same sort of thing as I did - what exactly is the point of this type of column nowadays? And George Ttoouli hits the nail on the head, for me. As a writer, you might subscribe to Coren's views. As a reader, why would you care?

Raw Light spotlight

Jane Holland has very kindly published The Memory Of Water, one of the poems from Troy Town, as part of her season of other poets at her Raw Light blog.

It has already featured fine poems from Katy Evans-Bush and Rob Mackenzie (whose book The Opposite Of Cabbage is just out), and I can't help being slightly envious of Katy that she managed to supply a poem of that quality that hadn't made it into her very fine book Me And The Dead!

There are plenty more poets to follow, too, so keep an eye on Raw Light...