Monday, 10 August 2009

Why aren't they more famous

There are a number of poets whose reputations run ahead of their achievements, it sometimes might seem. It wouldn't be polite to name them here but it would be fun to give a few clues about who I think they are and then see who anybody else thinks I mean, but that would be a dangerous game to play.
However, there are a number of names who, it has long seemed to me, are inexplicably much less famous than they deserve to be. It is possible, of course, that they don't pursue celebrity and wider acknowledgement but, if that's the case, there's little point in publishing at all.
Some of the following names might be familiar to the afficiandos of contemporary poetry but you would need to have read a lot of poetry magazines over the last twenty years to know them all.
I've never understood why Martin Mooney isn't listed among the host of tremendous poets that came out of Northern Ireland in the last few decades. I first came across his limited edition booklet Bonfire Makers in 1995, and the poem on Rasputin and Painting the Angel. These two poems alone would be enough to make him a favourite but the rest of his work is very fine, too, from the early booklets Brecht & An Exquisite Corpse and Escaping with Cuts and Bruises through Grub, Rasputin and his Children to Blue Lamp Disco. I hope there's another book due soon.
Martin Crucefix was in his third year at Lancaster when I was in my first. I've followed what I've been able to find of his career since, much of it in Poetry London. His book Beneath Tremendous Rain is well worth a look and the poem Sugar in Banana Sandwiches is a stand out. I realize there's been much more work since then.
Sue Hubbard should be a division higher in the poetry world's rankings, her poem on Rembrandt's model being one of the better poems about painting that one is likely to find.
Michael Daugherty was a stalwart of the littlepress magazines when I read them all in the late 70's, a beautifully lyrical and romantic poet of the time who, one might have thought, could have broken into a more mainstream and more lucrative area than being listed here. I looked him up in the Poetry Library last year and the poems have stood the test of time in their post-hippy, user-friendly gloriousness.
And Paul Berry, another star for me of those magazines run on idealistic shoestrings, deserved better. I have his booklets here, Homages and Holiday Snaps and A Bequest of Fire, and wonder if he's still at it and, if so, where. I'm not saying he, or any of the above, are exactly Seamus Heaney but if I ruled the world then not only would every day be the first day of Spring but also they would inhabit more prominent positions in the poetry firmament.
Beyond the creative writing courses and the Universities, away from the slams and the local reputations and the cliques promoting each other, there has been something great going on. It's just that you do need to look quite hard, and discriminatingly, to find it.
Now, there's an opinion for you.

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