It’s easy to say that I would like people who don’t normally read much poetry to pick up my stuff and enjoy reading it. I guess most poets would like to reach beyond the traditional poetry audience.
But how to go about that? It’s got nothing to do with any “difficulty vs. accessibility” debate, nothing to do with the poetry itself (with the proviso that the poetry is good quality). It must be to do with getting one’s poetry in the public eye, getting it noticed by those other than habitual poetry fans. It must be to do with marketing, attracting new audiences, a touch of evangelism. As I’ve observed before, people who don’t read poetry sometimes find they like it when they do.
Practically, how can poets draw readers who would rarely think of opening a poetry book or going to a reading?
