Having been just involved in the slightest of fracas on the interweb again on a poetry issue, I began to wonder if the renowned Poetry Wars were particularly ferocious because they were generated by poetry and how they compare with fallings out in other areas.
Wars, it seems, are most often and disatrously political or religious. I don't think we mean those. Poetry makes nothing happen, or at least nothing on that scale yet. But then we have football, with its intense rivalries. A little bit trivial and perhaps an outlet or an excuse for the venting of pent-up energies in young men. But although rugby is considerably more violent on the pitch, it doesn't cause such vitriol between its supporters who are proud of their passionate allegiance but bear less of a grudge against their nearest rivals. In England, cricket is even less so. It doesn't even matter to me much who wins as long as you see a good game but that attitude might not carry over to the Indian sub-continent or to an Ashes series. I believe Ice Cream Wars are territorial and between vendors rather than street fights between rival sets of vanilla and raspberry ripple advocates.
Poetry Wars can be those battles for power, like the accounts of in-fighting for control of the Poetry Society in the 60's or the dark art of leaking old news stories about the other candidates for the Oxford Professor job. A genuine ideological war would most often involve zealous, self-appointed revolutionaries (concrete poets in olden days, avantistes now) firing up their rhetoric in attacks on the staid, old guard of the 'mainstream', perceived as conservative, unadventurous and Philip Larkin. But in the same way that in 1970's British politics, several left wing factions concentrated attacking each other rather than the Conservative Party, I dare say these devout theorists are as concerned with occupying the main rebel ground ahead of each other rather than manning the barricades against the 'establishment', whoever they might be (I wouldn't want to be the one given the job to tell Ms. Duffy that she is 'establishment'). It's when they offer candidates for Establishment posts that I start to lose their line of argument. A rebel in charge is suddenly not a rebel any more and I'm sure they don't really want that. I do have specific examples in mind but I'm not going to mention them here.
But, however many courses are set up in universities and even if poetry gets a mention once a month in The Observer Review, poetry is a small world, lots of disparate communities, many of them happily enough unaware of each other, but there isn't much room at the top and there isn't much acclaim, or money, to be shared out among the rest. And so the scramble for attention and need to get one's elbows out and grab whatever one can might be the cause of personal vendettas and animosity.
I've heard stories of poets phoning up reviewers 'in their cups' after midnight to offer feedback of sorts on the review. And an e-mail I long since lost or deleted related stories of what first might have sounded like playground insults but ended more startlingly with threats to 'send the boys round'.
And there was I thinking that if I only listened to Poetry Please and learned the difference between a trochee and a spondee then I'd be fine.
I did wonder if a contributory cause of Poetry Wars being more vituperative than those in other lines of work was that those engaged in it were more erudite, cogent and expressive and thus better at it but, no, honestly, I don't think a lot of them are.
But, really, we could do with less of it. If we are 'unacknowledged legislators', I'm afraid I don't want to legislate for anybody. No position of power has any interest for me and I'm surprised and disappointed if it does for any poet. I prefer the amateur nature of the job and, anyway, where most people seem to see 'power' I'm afraid I only see 'responsibility' and that is enough to put me off.
And so, it worries me that I do get caught up in these little skirmishes from time to time. I blame the internet for providing the opportunity, the gin for providing the impetus and, I suppose, myself for actually caring. It's a wide church and there should be room for everyone to take their little turn.
But, on the other hand, if you do feel like quoting from a review or anything that appears here, I'd be grateful if you could do it properly and in context. Selective mis-quotation is like the blurb on a book that says 'this book is..brilliant' when what the reviewer had said was 'this book is anything but brilliant'. On this occasion I was lucky that I had powerful support that rallied heroically to my cause. I would usually stand up for myself but it wasn't possible on this occasion.
Meanwhile, perhaps it might be possible to go back to enjoying ourselves.
David Green
- David Green (Books) is the imprint under which I published booklets of my own poems. The original allocation of ISBN numbers is used up now, though. The 'Collected Poems' are now available as a pdf. The website is now what it has become, often more about music than books and not so often about poems. It will be about whatever suggests itself.
