|
Skip nav
Arts debate
Back to News diary home
Poet David Fine asks, what is the state of play in poetry today?
Supported by Arts Council England to write poems about the Ashes cricket tournament, David has written a poem on the theme looking back at the Arts Council’s 60 years in play.
The arts debate is part of the Arts Council’s 60th Anniversary, and about looking to the future of our policies and support for the arts. What is the future for poetry?
Tail-enders
Warning – reading this may alter your view of poetry forever.
This time last year I was flat on my back crippled with viral arthritis – so bad my wife had to put on my socks, and they don’t fit her seeing as her dainty feet are half the size of my clodhoppers.
I’m a sports nut. (God heard my plea for the left foot of Bobby Charlton and vocal chords of Nat King Cole but the klutz supreme got the order the wrong way round.) I found solace listening to cricket on the radio.
“If I get out of this mess,” I thought, “it’d be good to visit Australia and write poetry about the Ashes.”
www.ashespoetry.net was the result. A great public success – over two dozen newspaper articles, countless interviews on Australian ABC radio, BBC TV and Radio, Sky News, support from Arts Council England for the venture, and media work by Oxland Harbidge Communications.
Strange to promote poetry yet to be written. But not strange. For years I’ve said the last place you should expect to see poetry is in a book. How else will it reach people who don’t regularly read books, never mind poetry books? Newspapers, trains, buses, replay screens, feet of e-mails, voice-mails, the backs of invoices – the poetry magazine that counts…
Read the poem below. When was the last time you read a poem? When will be the next? In the 2007 Writers Handbook there are 157 poetry presses and plenty more magazines. Despite immense publicity not one has contacted me out of the blue about Ashes Poetry – unlike the rest of the media industry.
Has poetry reached sixty not out, or is it a tail-ender, a rabbit, praying anxiously they won’t have to leave the pavilion and face the chin-music? Which is an opportunity to smack it out of the ground.
Sixty Not Out – Arts Council England 1946-2006
The hardest part is the start,
knowing how to proceed, justify
and develop proven justifications
into significant progress.
Matters that count
to be enjoyed and remembered
more for what they give
than the acts themselves.
This is the art that makes art.
Sixty not out is not too bad for players of class.
Taking guard straight after VE Day
there have been numerous difficulties,
periods of uncertainty, sticky wickets,
unfavourable conditions, the odd play
and miss, opportunity, mix-ups in the middle
and occasionally benefit of the doubt.
It takes some skill and effort to reach sixty not out.
Players of class look towards a century,
a big ton or more. Once set it should follow
however hard the bowlers of perfection bellow
to turn the umpires of opinion against themselves.
The art that makes art must not stand apart
from artists nor detractors, but face their deliveries
and make more of them in setting the score.
Read more poems and submit your own in arts debate poetry
Join the debate
* = required
Click on the image to access a PDF (990Kb) of the new summary report, What people want from the arts
News
-
Arts debate overall findings now available!
06 November
-
Open space event report
11 October
-
Final stage of arts debate fieldwork highlights the importance of quality of experience
28 September
more news > >
Choice poem! Do we undervalue peotry? It is so important to our eductaion and understanding of the world. Without peotry we would have no way of expressing ourselves artistically. Peotry features regularly in my practice and it helps me to realise the effect and content of my 3D making. All artists have a peotic essence and maybe it does go a little unrealised. We need to get reconnected to the peots within'!
I can only give my own views . Language is given us to communicate . Many so-called poems by the 170 presses do not do this even in print and with study . Poets are no longer writing for the public but for elitist groups , full of obscurity , often with Latin or other quotations , and references to the obscure Greek or Irish myth and folklore . There is another group writing in prose broken into random lines with no internal flow of sound or imagery .Yet another set uses end rhymes , and therefore thinks the result must be poetry .
Poetry should be understood when read aloud . It should be admired for what it says and the way it is composed to make the maximum impact , but that is all secondary to the impact itself . Poetry magazines come and go and most have such small circulations that the poet receives payment of one free copy . Competitions pay the winners but the runner-ups are published for no payment (in fact the poets have already paid an entrance fee ). Cosequently as they have then been published these poems are denied entry to further competitions. There is no room for professional poets any more . The more successful poet might earn some sort of living lecturing , judging , appearing at Festivals . Agents know there is no money in poetry and that is why there are none for poetry , and much poetic talent has strayed into novels etc . Do not expect to achieve a living from poetry ,but if a little more than admiration from your close contemporaries is required then take your poetry into the pub , the Gardening Club, the W.I. and Slams : read aloud ,and have them on sale at tenpence a sheet . There were no Publishers at the time of Beowulf .If after considering all this you still write poetry then you have a chance -- but get to know the right people .