Encouraging participation in Poetry
Real Money for Metaphorical Mouths by Frances Spurrier
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Even twenty years ago, creative writing was almost unknown as an academic subject apart from the course run by Malcolm Bradbury at UEA. Now such courses are run routinely in universities and colleges up and down the land - aimed generally at writers of prose but poetry too is on a roll.
Writers are attending workshops in droves - beginners, intermediate advanced, in the UK , abroad, anywhere. Performance poetry is becoming competitive; the slam; the gig - all listed in Time Out and local papers. Young, old, we gather in secret, fusty, cramped little rooms above pubs, in cafes, or in cellars in London, Liverpool, Lymington, Edinburgh. Why we do it is less clear. Because we find it therapeutic? Possibly - although anyone who tries to write seriously realises quickly that in terms of therapy walking barefoot over a bed of nails is easier.
Perhaps poetry offers a candle light illumination on tiny bits of an increasingly dark and frightening world? Or reminds us that there is still something that matters beyond the rush and grab of every day. The idea that poetry is somehow exclusive or elitist is nonsense. Entry into many events is free, or available for less than the price of a pint of beer. Nor do you have to be published or part of any clique to get exposure for your work.
Open-mic nights, slams, competitions abound, enough to satisfy the needs of any addict. And now the internet has opened the field even further. For anyone prepared to invest a little time and effort into this art - and it is an art, like painting, like mosaic - not a quick fix or soundbite entertainment - there is enough for a lifetime in terms of literary achievement. What there is not is financial reward.
The poetry world is on its metaphorical knees in terms of funding. Yet here is a paradox. The same magazines which adorn the shelves of the Poetry Library on the 5th floor of London’s Southbank Centre - which are inundated every week with thousands of submissions - struggle to get the money they need to subsist from their tiny numbers of subscriptions. Many mainstream publishers will not publish - because booksellers will not or cannot sell - poetry.
Of course no-one seriously expects that anyone would actually try and make any money out of this. Poets just sit in garrets and metaphorise and are honoured to have the opportunity to die of starvation for Queen and Country. Either that or, the more usual choice, they must have full time jobs and write bleary eyed at their computers at 2 in the morning after the kids have gone to bed (and before they get up again). That is the status quo and not much looks like changing. No matter how many of us squash into the Troubadour or take our response to The Wasteland along to the room above the pub.
Every year those few members who are physically able to, squeeze into the tiny meeting room available for the Poetry Society’s AGM - a space smaller than many people’s living rooms - to be told that there is an urgency for more money, more marketing, more space, more awareness, more everything. But space - particularly in Central London - is a mainstream commodity. On an intellectual level, there may be plenty of people willing to pay Poetry lip service (excuse the pun) but when it comes to commerce, then two worlds collide. Poetry does not occupy mainstream commercial space; that privilege is reserved for people who spin straw into gold.
Why are there no corporate sponsors for poetry? Why is there no Orange prize for Poetry, why no Nike Collection? No Virgin Anthology? Not from an expectation that any money can be made - these hugely wealthy corpocracies do not need any more money - but from a philanthropic desire to sponsor the Arts?
Of course it will not happen. For a sponsor, an hour’s reading at the Poet’s Church in Holborn doesn’t have quite the Wow factor of a Formula One race. Whether this has to do with the quality of contemporary poetry I do not know; there are others far better qualified than I am to comment on that. But I do know that unless there is a radical change in attitudes, followed by a putting of money where mouths are, those who write poetry are destined to be starving in garrets at 2am for the foreseeable future.
The Press Team
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