Forward Poetry Prize 2013 - Surprises?

I now can't find the link to this, but the judges of this year's Forward Poetry prizes have said that there will be 'surprises'. This is good news - if it comes to pass. There are always a few surprises in the First Collection category - it's impossible to predict the shortlist in that one, but surprises in the main shortlist have been very, very thin on the ground for the last few years. The biggest surprise would be if that changed in any way! But let's test it out. There are no surprises if this is the shortlist (books need to have been published between 1 October 2012 and 30 September 2013 - presumably the summer 2013 books come to the judges in ms form):

Michael Symmons Roberts – Drysalter (Cape)
Anne Stevenson – Astonishment (Bloodaxe)
Dannie Abse – Speak, Old Parrot (Hutchison)
Robin Robertson – Hill of Doors (Cape)
Kathleen Jamie – The Overhaul (Picador)
Fiona Sampson – Coleshill (Chatto & Windus)
Glyn Maxwell – Pluto (Picador)
Anne Carson – Red Doc > (Cape)
David Morley – The Gypsy and the Poet (Carcanet)
George Szirtes – Bad Machine (Bloodaxe)

In addition, I wouldn't bat an eyelid of any of these ones were on it:

Ahren Warner – Pretty (Bloodaxe)
W.N. Herbert – Omnesia (Bloodaxe)
Jacob Polley – The Havocs (Picador)
Andrew Motion – The Customs House (Faber)
Fleur Adcock – Glass Wings (Bloodaxe)
Nick Laird – Go Giants (Faber)
Alison Brackenbury - Then (Carcanet)
Maurice Riordan – The Water Stealer (Faber)
Matthew Francis – Muscovy (Faber)

Now, some of these books are extremely good and would deserve their place on a shortlist. Some of them - in my opinion, of course! - definitely wouldn't... I have probably missed several non-surprises, forgetting they've been published etc, so feel free to add to the list.

The shortlist is announced this Monday 8 July. I hope I am surprised!

UK Poetry Awards and Gender

Just a few harmless statistics on UK poetry awards and gender:

Forward Poetry Prizes from 1992-2012:
Main Prize winner - women 4, men 17.
First Collection prize - woman 9, men 12
Best Poem – women 11, men 10

T.S. Eliot Prize from 1993-2011:
winners - women 4, men 15

Costa Award, poetry category, from 2000-2011:
winners - women 4, men 8

Scottish Poetry Book of the Year (2007-11):
winners - women 0, men 5

There are various conclusions we might draw from these statistics.

The first alternative is that that women do not often write good books. They very rarely write the best poetry book of any year, and never do in Scotland. Their first collections are usually stronger than anything they do afterwards. But they do write good individual poems, even slightly better individual poems than men.

The second alternative is that something is slightly askew with the awards systems.

The third alternative is...oh, I don’t know...

Jessie J, Price Tag and Poetry

Here are a few statistics. Two years and four months ago, I made a video of myself reading a poem. It wasn’t a professional job, just my stepson holding a video camera and me standing in a blizzard reading ‘White Noise’. I guess there is a certain humour about it as the snow beats down on me and the book (which I had to cover in clingflim to save it from disintegration), but there is no other concession to the entertainment industry. I uploaded the video to YouTube where it has received 421 views. Not bad for poetry – that’s about one view every day and half.

Contrast this with a video uploaded one year and four months ago of Jessie J’s Price Tag, the official video of the international smash hit single. The video helpfully reminds us that the money doesn’t matter – just as well for me, although I suspect its budget would have been just slightly more than mine. Even a vertical strip torn from one of Jessie’s outfits would have cost more than my video camera. In case anyone thinks I’m being cynical about her, I’m not. She’s obviously a highly talented songwriter and singer (unlike some of her contemporaries) and Price Tag is an extremely catchy song. I’m not surprised it was a massive hit. And the viewing figures? Well, I measured them over the last four days:

Today - 208,692,483
Friday - 208,405,142
Thursday - 208,250,000
Wednesday - 208,133,000

Basically, the views are rising at a rate of anything between about 120,000 and 300,000 a day! By the time you read this, they will have risen significantly again (edit: 16,000 people have watched it in the 1 hour and 20 minutes since I posted this article). At the time of writing, nearly 209 million (209 million!!) people have watched this video and that’s only the official video. It doesn’t count the hundreds of live and acoustic versions of the song, some of them very high quality recordings.

So there you have it: 209,000,000 versus 421. In fact, if you add another year’s viewing to Price Tag to catch up with me, it would be more like 421,000,000 to my 421. A Jessie J song is officially one million times more popular than one of my poems!

Clearly, there are tie-ups between poetry and music – lyrics are obviously a close relation, and good poems are built on rhythm, sound, music etc, but none of that seems to have entered popular consciousness. Poetry suffers from complete lack of exposure. Most people wouldn’t know where to start. And most of them wouldn’t want to start. The latter is fine by me – I wouldn’t want to start doing all kinds of activities that other people find fascinating e.g. playing computer games, watching basketball, cricket etc. I am also resigned to the fact that poetry is a minority and non-commercial activity, and that brings its own creative freedom from commercial pressure, for which I’m grateful. There is also no point in competing for space with genuinely popular art forms like pop music – there is simply no competition, as the figures above demonstrate.

But somehow, I still believe that good poetry is important and that a society is diminished when it loses sight of it. Good poetry is not entirely invisible yet, even if it is about 99.9% of the time, but I do think that the 0.1% is vital to build on. I don’t think poets should pander to the commercial side of things – poetry is more akin to an obscure Scandinavian trio, with a cult following, playing weird music in 5/4 time with terse Norwegian lyrics, than to a new Lady Gaga single with accompanying superficial ‘shock’ banalities. But I’d bet the Scandinavians would still succeed in reaching a bigger audience than an average Faber poet (let alone everyone else). I also believe there is no reason for that to be the case.

Facebook, Blogging and Narcissism

I got into an interesting Facebook discussion yesterday on narcissism; whether or not poetry blogging was simply a narcissistic activity which stole time away from what was truly important – writing poems.

Well, the irony that this discussion took place on Facebook is not lost on me. Facebook is surely the most potentially narcissistic activity ever invented. Just as football matches may indeed help young males to scream away their latent aggression, Facebook can end up as an unbelievably massive pit of pent-up hubris. Do you need to say something about yourself, your opinions, products, beliefs or attitudes? Now you can throw it all up in public and no one will hand you a mop and bucket afterwards. In Facebook, self-reference is not only expected, it’s the entire raison d’etre – if you bypass those who use it only to hook up with old friends or get a date for Saturday night.

Facebook is a giant blog. Or rather, it’s a zillion different blogs all rabbitting on at one another endlessly. But even a poet’s most considered Facebook wall (is there such a thing?) or ‘Timeline’ will invariably lack the breadth and depth of the better poetry blogs, and will be a hundred times more narcissistic than most. If you went through this blog from beginning to end, you would find some entries I’d probably want to disown and one day I may delete everything I’d rather not leave future generations to snigger over, on the off chance anyone from a future generation actually stumbled in here – probably drunk and frittering away a research grant they got to study barbarian communication methods. But I wouldn’t delete everything.

Basically, saying that blogs are hubristic is like saying books are manifestations of mad egos or that songs are sung only by people who love the sound of their own voice. Anyone who publishes anything anywhere in any medium is saying, “I think this will interest other people.” The bad news is that most of it won’t. Some of it will for a few minutes, but almost nothing will last. Value resides in a tiny spoonful of this glutinous soup.

The argument runs that at least a book or album has been selected and worked on by publisher, editor, agent, producer etc, whereas blogs are mainly inane, self-driven ramblings of people who could have spent their time more productively. But most books are rubbish, most albums too, even despite this level of control and input. “Inane, self-driven ramblings” could describe many poems published today and I’m not talking about ‘confessional’ poems or any other kind of autobiographical verse (some of which is good), but poems which seem designed to offer the reader the promise of wisdom, insight, epiphany or joy and instead present him/her with an earnest exercise in cliché, or just scream, “Look how original I am! Look how fun I am! Look how clever I am! Look at this unique image/phrase/technique I created (and don’t realise has been used before by about five million other poets before me because I don’t read poetry so as to avoid being influenced by it)! But please save your applause until the end of my ninety-seven pages...” In other words, a blog is not necessarily any more self serving than a poem, even a poem that has been accepted by a magazine.

I suppose I could have written a poem in the time it’s taken me to slam down this article. But I see no reason to bring yet another poem into the world to join the millions of other poems no one wants to read just for the sake of it. I write a poem when it feels necessary to do so and I work hard on getting it just right. Every semi-colon of it. I write a blog post if I feel in the mood and people can take it or leave it. Leave it? Sure thing. Be my guest. Or don’t be. Facebook, after all, is waiting for your attention...

The Forward Prizes 2012: Predictions

Tonight the results will be announced for the Forward Prizes (or Backward Prizes as they are now popularly called) for Best Collection, Best First Collection and Best Poem. I haven’t said anything about this up until now. The more I look at the poetry awards in the UK, the more I realise the whole thing is caught up in the poetry biz. Awards sometimes resemble ‘rewards’ or mutual back-slapping parties between judges and recipients. Maybe tonight will prove otherwise. ‘Outsider’ figures have won awards occasionally in the past and there is always that chance.

But predictions are always fun. The shortlists are here. I predict that John Burnside will win Best Collection. Sean O’Brien and David Harsent will both have a strong appeal for the judges, but I guess they may feel John Burnside’s time has come: he hasn’t won it before. Geoffrey Hill hasn’t won it before either, but he will no doubt divide the judges down the middle.

I predict that Rachael Boast will win Best First Collection, although I am particularly unsure of my guess in this category. Anything on the shortlist could win.

The Best Poem category contains two poems from Poetry Review (the editor is one of the judges, although there are five judges. Can't make the judging process easy, mind you), one from the London Review of Books, and one from Poetry London. I have only read Sharon Olds’s poem in the Best Poem category, but that won’t stop me having a guess. I predict Alan Jenkins will win.

I am not very good at guessing winners of anything, by the way, so don’t rush down to the bookies and place money on account of my tips.

*Edit: actually, my advice at the end was wrong. You should have gone to the bookies and invested your life-savings on my first two predictions - as John Burnside and Rachael Boast both won*

Things That Happened When I Was In Turkey

Firstly, the death of Sam Hoare, the journalist who blew the whistle on the News of the World phone hacking scandal. It appears that his death was self-inflicted, according to police reports, but I believe investigations are still going on.

Secondly, the Poetry Society EGM. I had arranged my proxy vote before I left for Turkey. Since my return, I’ve been catching up with what happened. My jaw has dropped on several occasions. In a previous post, I asked whether the lack of transparency had been caused because either:

1. The Poetry Society had something to hide
2. The Poetry Society was beyond useless at public relations
3. The situation was much worse even than it seemed, so bad that things couldn’t possibly be made public [without severe embarrassment]

It now looks as though all three of these possibilities were accurate! What has happened has been much worse that I could have believed and several questions remain unanswered. The best (and most chilling) summary I have read has been that by George Szirtes. There is a petition to reinstate Judith Palmer as Director, which I have signed. Clearly, the PS needs to get back in line with what the Arts Council expected of it. Whether it can do this with the current board over the next couple of months is open to serious doubt. Also, the question of Poetry Review and of the Editor’s line management both clearly have to be resolved without delay, but I have no confidence in the current board to deal with these matters properly.

Thirdly, the death of Amy Winehouse. I feel sadder about this than some of my friends might expect. It is, of course, the death of a young person in circumstances common to many families and every one of those is a private grief and torment. But, in a more public sense, I feel sad because I don’t think Amy had reached her peak, in contrast, say, to Kurt Cobain – I doubt Kurt could have improved on the final two Nirvana albums if he’d lived to 100. Amy’s Back to Black, on the other hand, contained a few brilliant songs, showing immense talent, but also several fillers. She might have fulfilled her potential if she hadn’t fallen into bad company, bad drugs etc. We’ll never know now.

Fourthly, Norway was all over the Turkish TV channels, as elsewhere. Watching the reports in Turkish, not understanding a word but understanding the images all too well, was a sad and sobering experience.

Meltdown (2011): Poetry Society

Very funny satire on the Poetry Society's current woes. Not exactly the first attempt to do something with this film(!), but really well done.

Poetry Society: Wheelbarrow and Plums

I have been taking my customary July break from blogging (is it customary? Well, if not, it should be). I guess anyone wanting to keep up with the Poetry Society story can do so elsewhere, at Baroque in Hackney and Raw Light etc. A General Meeting has been called by the Poetry Society on 22nd July at 2pm, but it’s unclear whether the agenda will address members’ concerns expressed in the requisition (which did achieve far more than the required 10% of signatories to call for an EGM). The red wheelbarrow delivering the signatures was met with a gift of plums. But any attempt to get clarification results in a reply which says more or less nothing except that an agenda for the GM will be produced next week – typical of the way the Poetry Society board have managed this situation from the beginning. They act like politicians, full of evasions and anodyne language, unwilling to provide a direct answer to anything. But, like politicians, they are dependent on an electorate...

The Poetry Society Chaos Update

Since I first posted about the Chaos at the Poetry Society three weeks ago, quite a lot has happened. Or, rather, nothing has happened. Or, I’m not really sure. Katy’s article at Baroque in Hackney sums up pretty much all anyone knows about what’s going on. Three weeks ago, I made a low level plea to the Poetry Society, which now must seem humorous in an uncomfortable kind of way:

“...it becomes important to make some kind of statement. Not a bland statement which says nothing, but a statement which accurately and as fairly as possible tells the story...”

The Poetry Society has released two statements since, one of which said “business as usual”, and another which said, “moving forward”. Three possibilities suggest themselves to me from these statements:

1. The Poetry Society has something to hide
2. The Poetry Society is beyond useless at public relations
3. The situation is much worse even than it seems, so bad that things can’t possibly be made public

It’s hard to know which to go for. Of course, all or none could be true. I am impressed with Fiona Moore’s assessment of the situation from a public relations perspective. It won’t make happy reading for the Poetry Society, who ought to start listening before it’s too late. Into the vacuum has come a great deal of speculation, culminating yesterday with an article in the Daily Telegraph, which suggested the dispute was mainly about money. This explanation may have some truth, but it doesn’t add up. The Poetry Society received an increase in its grant from the Arts Council of England. The application must have been for specific purposes and must have been in accordance with its own stated aims and objectives. If people on the board, after receiving the grant, want to spend money on something different to what they’ve just received it for, they simply can’t do it. Unless they are “reinterpreting” what the application means, when it will still have to be generally in line with what ACE understood it to mean. This all smacks of politicking behind the scenes, people with opposing visions seeking dominance. The Telegraph suggests that ACE is becoming uneasy. If so (it is a big “if”), that’s not exactly great for staff morale, given that their jobs depend on this money, but I doubt ACE would want to pull out. I imagine the silence must be due to current sensitive negotiations between ACE and the Poetry Society and between different schools of thought within the society. Apparently there is a July deadline for a report on precisely how some of the funding will be used. That document should make interesting reading!

Lemn Sissay stepped in with a blog article a few days ago. I'm sure it's written with integrity and the best of intentions, but I also think it’s fair to say that he doesn’t really present a coherent argument. The main thrust of the article is to defend Fiona Sampson, editor of Poetry Review, the magazine of the Poetry Society. He feels that FS is being stitched up by people with a vested interest in her being removed. I guess there are a number of people who would like to see her booted out. I have no view on this, as I'm not a subcriber and haven't submitted anything for years. I think Fiona Sampson has offered the magazine strengths (translated work) and weaknesses (lack of range). But the extent of Fiona Sampson’s involvement in the current disputes is impossible to determine. Lemn Sissay says she has nothing to do with it. Other people say she is central to the arguments. People argue about these things on Facebook, on blogs, on newspaper comment sections, on the basis of facts which may not be facts. An entire discourse develops around happenings which may not have happened, figures which may not tell any story let alone a whole story, personalities which may be phantoms.

Charles Boyle summed it up well when he wrote:

I have no inside info; I don’t even have gossip. But what to me is a little bit interesting is that in the absence of hard fact, the speculation that fills the vacuum can become what a thing is about and start to influence what happens next.

Very true. But speculation requires a vacuum and the Poetry Society, in my opinion, is largely to blame for creating one. Its public statements have been evasive and cagey and the resulting speculation has led to a vast number of people joining the society simply to sign a petition calling for an EGM to get full answers. Some of the questions I have seen mooted for a potential EGM don’t seem quite adequate in that they can be answered ‘yes’ or ‘no’ and a few monosyllabic answers won’t tell us any more than the Poetry Society’s press releases. I reckon questions need to be open enough to require a thorough explanation.

I know Kate Clanchy initiated a call for names to call an EGM (around 340 are required, I believe), but I’m unsure whether that has now been derailed or not. (Actually, it's still on track. Katy EB writes in the comments, "Kate C is definitely still collecting names; anyone who wants to be on the list should email her at kateclanchy at gmail dot com. She has a barrister advising as to process and content of a possible EGM; email her for more information"). If anyone else is leading the call with an agenda set up and specific questions on the table (as required), I don’t know who it is. But I'm sure we'll find out sooner or later...

(incidentally, I don't mind comments on this, but please keep them from being abusive to individuals. I will delete comments which contain either abuse or libellous material)

Chaos at the Poetry Society

I’ve been following the news from the Poetry Society, the little that has emerged in the past couple of weeks, with a degree of confusion. I’m not a member and I don’t suppose what happens makes any difference to me personally, but it nevertheless is becoming a genuine concern.

A week or two ago, the director of the Poetry Society, Judith Palmer, resigned. The story I heard was that she and some members of the board were pulling in different directions as regards administrative structure. This didn’t quite ring true. Directors don’t resign just because of disagreements over structure. But the board and staff were asked to observe confidentiality and so little accurate news emerged.

I do see the point in this, unlike some others who want everything aired in public. People on a board have to feel secure in speaking their mind on difficult issues while knowing what they say in private isn't going to be broadcast all over Facebook ten minutes later. But secrecy only works if nothing gets out. The minute people begin to leak hints and whisper slanted stories and Facebook threads become viral and rumours of rumours spread by word of mouth, email and on social networking sites, it becomes important to make some kind of statement. Not a bland statement which says nothing, but a statement which accurately and as fairly as possible tells the story, without attributing private opinions.

If that doesn’t happen, you get stories like this one from the Evening Standard appearing. It sounds bad. It makes accusations that the board (and one person in particular) wanted to change the Poetry Society’s focus. If this is true, I imagine it will go down extremely badly with the rank and file members of the society. The article also carries a call from an unnamed source for an EGM to ask for the board’s resignation.

The only problem is that this story comes from the Evening Standard. It may be true, it may not be true. It may be sensationalising gossip, it may be bitterness. It may have hit the nail on the head or it may be someone throwing a few darts and missing the board (apologies for the pun) by miles. Who knows? I’m only amazed that so many intelligent people on Facebook seem ready and willing to trust a British rag without question!

On the other hand, this does once again reveal clearly the urgent need for an accurate and fair statement on the situation from the Poetry Society, with input from the factions on both sides. If a statement doesn’t come, then members and interested onlookers can form their opinions only by what they read in the tabloids and on Facebook. They have nothing else to go on, and it makes the Poetry Society look as if they are being secretive, doing something improper, and adds fuel to the fire this newspaper article is obviously delighted to fan.