The Pleasant Sound of Poetry Sales Increasing

A wee while back, I speculated about the preception and truth of poetry sales. This was before the BBC's admirable poetry season and Salt's cash crisis. Now, today, courtesy of Matt Merritt, I found this article on the effect the Beeb's tranche of programmes has had on poetry sales.

Or, to be more precise, the sales of some poetry books. All by dead white poets, though one of them isn't male. Some of the percentages are staggering, and I can't help but wonder whether there was any similar effect on sales for the contemporary poets who featured as talking heads in Owen Sheers's series on BBC4. They each got to read a poem of theirs, but they were largely there to discuss the poet and poem under scrutiny (and a good thing it was too; I'd much rather have fellow poets do that than non-poet academics).

Would a similar run of programmes on living poets have a similar effect on sales of their works? I guess the Beeb might not find it so easy to get hold of knowledgable, articulate, well-known enthusiasts to present flagship programmes for such a season, but it's well worth a shot. (Any commissioning editors reading this?)

In not unconnected news, Chris Hamilton-Emery blogs compellingly about the origins of, and response to, Salt's "Just One Book" campaign. This, like the response to the BBC season, demonstrates that there is a market for poetry*. The problem is 1) tapping it and 2) broadening it. That's where a well-researched, well-produced, well-presented season on contemporary poetry could do the art a world of good. The public, of course, needs a way into any art form, especially when the reality of its practice challenges their perceptions. The Beeb has shown how it can achieve that. The challenge now is to take that into new territory.

*The Ambulance Box is now into its third print run!

On Newsnight Review

Well, I almost was: the covers for The Ambulance Box, The Opposite of Cabbage and Ian Gregson's How We Met filled the screen momentarily as a clip from Salt's Just One Book video was played. Priceless advertising! Chris got a few seconds on the campaign, on which you can read the latest here.

You can watch the programme here for the next seven days. It was great to have an edition of Newsnight Review dedicated to poetry. Simon Armitage spoke a lot of sense, to my mind, but most of the panel came over well. The hip-hop artist, whose name escapes me, also impressed me. A pity we didn't hear or see any of his Shakespeare work.

I have to say, hooray for the licence fee! We wouldn't have had a poetry season without it, would we?

The Heart of Arts Policy

I've just discovered that Michael Russell, the Scottish minister with responsibility for culture, held a meeting with artists yesterday at the Traverse Theatre. This is important stuff for anyone involved or interested in Scotland's cultural life. There's a short video about the event here; it includes reactions to the meeting from Ron Butlin and Margaret Bennett. You can (and should) listen to a podcast of the whole thing here and make up your own mind. Having done so, this artist is encouraged about the current direction of arts policy.

If you don't have time to listen, there is a very good report of the event in The Herald, peppered with quotations from Russell's opening speech and his answers to the audience's questions. The Scotsman, on the other hand, will tell you very little about what he said. It focuses on the constitutional issues raised by the nature of the Scottish block grant, which Russell mentioned once or twice. It won't be hard make your mind up about that difference.

Pax? Pax?

Here's all I have to say about this story:

The Pax can belt a Mac at Night
xxMiscaw wir Bard and aw that
But critic's care's abuin his might;
xxGuid faith, he mauna faw that!
For aw that and aw that,
xxHis sarky sneers and aw that,
The pith o sense and pride o worth
xxAre higher ranks than aw that.

Meanwhile, in less carnaptious news, Burns's words are to be inscribed on the transport system in the west of Scotland. At a cost of £15,000, the scheme seems pretty cheap. Perhaps we can afford to do something similar for more of Scotland's great poets. (Maybe a sequence of topiary somewhere to commemorate MacDiarmid.)

The Professionals

Just discovered this page of interview excerpts from a small gathering of big-name poets. It's something of a mixed bunch to my eye (no great fan of Betjeman, me), but it looks worth investigating and at least it's pretty international. I'll certainly be commenting on Walcott's remarks on rhyme at some point once I've digested them a bit more and formulated my response.

I'm intrigued by the url: "... audiointerviews/professions/poets ..." Perhaps someone at BBC Four is under the impression there's an awful lot more money in poetry than any of us involved it think.

Three-Michelin-Star Tele

I've only ever got hooked on two--ahem--reality TV shows: Musicality and Masterchef. Both, of course, are basically talent shows with a reality TV element injected into them. (Perhaps we could call them soft reality TV rather than the hard reality [sic] TV of, say, Big Brother. Who I'm not watching. Ever. Sorry.) Both also lack the glitz, pizzazz and superhype of other talent shows such as The Zzzzz Factor, Any Idea Will Do or How Do You Solve a Problem Like the Ratings?. Instead of hype, the focus in the two Ms is/was on unadorned talent, hard work and, in the case of Masterchef certainly, sheer creativity.

Another crucial element both programmes--certainly in the latter stages of the competitions--is the narrative arc of the contestants' development. The lack of glamour and the narrative focus together give the impression of following a real personal emotional and experiential journey, as opposed to observing the manufacture of another identical pop unit for market consumption. That even goes for Musicality, where the ultimate prize was to perform in a West End show. That narrative arc is what hooked me. That and, in the case of Masterchef, the madcap, prodigious brilliance and innovation of Emily's dishes.

Another thing: in one sense, Masterchef shouldn't work. The crux and climax of a programme is the contestants' cooking, which only the judges are able to assess. The viewer can assess presentation, of course, but not flavour, seasoning, consistency or texture. That's the opposite of Musicality or the phone-in voting contests, where everyone has seen and heard the contestants' performances and everyone has an opinion on them.

But perhaps that's the genius of Masterchef as reality TV: it forces the viewer to imaginge what the dishes must taste like. In the other shows, the viewer's imagination is uncalled-for. In fact, it's cancelled out, particularly by the higher-budget, glitz and glamour end of the genre. Masterchef therefore has soul in a way that not even Musicality, for all its emotional journey, could manage. Perhaps that's why I finished watching the grand final last night and felt that drive to write returning with fresh vigour.

A Civil Note on the Press

Imagine my surprise, on flicking through this week's Guardian Review to find that the book of the week is not only a collection of poetry but a new book by Geoffrey Hill, A Treatise of Civil Power*. At last! The Guardian has been supportive of Hill for a while, but I don't remember the last time the Review gave that accolade to any volume of poetry. Nonetheless, I was disappointed to find no other poetry reviews in the paper. A ridiculous situation. After all, you wouldn't expect there to be no further fiction reviews if the book of the week was a novel.

*Strictly speaking, this isn't really a new book as far as I can gather, given that a volume of the same title was published by Clutag Press in 2005. Penguin's page for the book doesn't show the contents, so I can't ascertain whether the volumes are identical, although the titles mentioned in the review seem to indicate that they are at least substantially the same. The Clutag edition is now sold out; I wasn't quick enough on the mark to get a copy, but I think it was signifcantly dearer than the Penguin edition anyway!

Reading and Thinking

It's worth taking 10 minutes to listen to the interview with Fiona Sampson from Woman's Hour last week, helpfully drawn to my attention by my wife. She has quite a few interesting nuggets to share about poetry and editing Poetry Review. It's encouraging to hear that she reads all the roughly 60,000 unsolicited submissions that come into the magazine's office in a year, especially as not all poetry competitions are honest about who does the initial read-through*.

I was also interested by what she had to say about the necessity for women's writing not to let go of thinking. That had never hit me as a particular problem, but maybe that's because of the kind of poetry I'm drawn to, regardless of the poet's gender. I'm also struck that we should still have such a label as "women's writing" without ever talking about "men's writing" as a definable cultural entity. Perhaps that demonstrates just how far away we still are from genuine literary gender equality. Perhaps it also points to a greater reluctance among men to read "women's writing" than the other way round. A curious state of affairs, given how much men puzzle over the way women think.

*I did have an online reference for this but can't find it at the moment. I'll put it in when I can.

Making Headway with the Forward ?

The shortleet for this year's Forward prizes is out and I haven't read a single book on it. No surprise there, as I don't ever seem to keep well abreast of these lists. I don't own any of the titles yet either, although John Burnside's Gift Songs should already be in the post from the PBS.

Without knowing the work, the only interesting comment I can make about the list this year is that it shows Salt Publishing continuing to make advances into the Mighty Handful's share of the publicity cake: one title in the best collection category* and two in the shortlist for the first collection prize**. No mere crumbs these, especially as the Guardian article linked to above leads with a few paragraphs about Luke Kennard, the Salt nominee for the best collection prize. The folk at Salt are understandably and justifiably delighted. It's due recognition of the vibrance, energy and success of their publishing enterprise.

Also interesting is the fact that the Guardian also has an article by Sarah Crown, editor of Guaridan Unlimited Books and one of the Forward judges, about her experience of reading nowt but poetry for three weeks. As far as I recall, such coverage for the Forward is without precident. It's the kind of treatment usually reserved for the Booker or, at a pinch the Whitbread-sorry!-Costa awards. Does this mean that the cultural media are waking up to the Forward? I hope so, though it's probably just a matter of Crown's being on the judging panel. Even if it is, I doubt it means that we'll see many more poetry collections reviewed in the mainstream broadsheet press in a hurry.

*Cape has two, while Picador, Carcanet and Bloodaxe have one apiece.

**The other two are from Arc and Faber.

Is the Sleeping Electorate Waking?

The Sunday Herald has launched a campaign for a new Scottish Constitutional Convention. Is it just me, or has the result of the Scottish election breathed new life into Scottish politics, not only in itself but in how it relates to British politics?

Scottish Six

So the notion of a "Scottish Six" is back on the agenda, though probably not very far up it. I don't know how far this is an intitiative of Pete Wishart's or of the wider SNP but, if a Scottish Six O'clock News comes into being, I suspect it won't happen in a great hurry.

Words on War

Read this, by Eliot Weinberger, and weep.

Then read this, also by Weinberger, and weep some more.

Finally, read this, not by Weinberger, and smile grimly.

Poems on Pillows: the Renga

After the horror of the photoshoot, we settled down to writing, with Ken first recording an introduction to the renga for the BBC Radio Scotland arts show Radio Cafe. Elspeth had to shuffle off for a live studio interview with them at lunchtime, but Richard and I were left voiceless on the airwaves.

Participating in a renga seems to attune the writing mind well to the sharp focus of the haiku style. It probably helped that the morning was glorious and there was plenty fodder for imagery in the view from the hotel room (I think it's the one at the top of this page) and even in the room itself. The four of us generally took quite different approaches to the strictures of the schema, which made for a stimulating day. Several stanzas that didn't make it into the renga were the equal of any that did.

Word is that, aside from the excerpts on the postcard, the whole renga will be published on the websites of the Scottish Poetry Library and Ten Hill Place. I'll post a link when that happens. It also might be displayed somewhere in the hotel, but you'll have to stay there to be able to see that!

O Wert Thou in the Quirky Shot

I am beginning to think that the necessary qualifications for working in PR and media relations must include a degree of--perhaps that should be "degree in"--Schadenfreude. It seems to me a truth universally ignored, at least by PR people, that the unfortunates who have to appear in quirky publicity shots are never the folk who dream them up.

Picture the scene: hotel bed, three poets, account director from a PR agency, someone from Radio Scotland and four photographers. This is what greeted me, Elspeth and Richard on Thursday when we arrived for the publicity photoshoot that preceeded the renga at Ten Hill Place [new readers start here, then go here]. Laid out on the bed were white dressing gowns and slippers for the three of us and Ken Cockburn, who was leading the renga. This despite the fact that, the previous day, Ken had expressed to the PR woman our unease with the idea of us being photographed together on the bed in white bathrobes and she had responded along the lines of "they won't have to do anything they don't want to."

Ken had suggested he bring his Japanese tea set for shots with an improvised tea ceremony as an alternative to the bathrobes, but he was late in arriving. Elspeth and Richard, seeing how little hope there was in resistance, put aside their inhibitions and donned the gear. I stood on my dignity somewhat longer, but it was clearly futile. Eventually, under the application of a little pressure, including reassurance that "the photographers will know if it's not working", and without Ken's tea set to provide a get-out, I had little option but to girn and bear it.

We were all still fully clothed underneath the dressing gowns of course. With, eventually, 11 people in the room, that made things a little on the warm side for us. By the time Ken made it, the photographers had been absorbed for several minutes in snapping us in various purportedly pensive poses on the bed and were not interested in a tea ceremony. Unfortunately, they seemed to think it was working.

Really, none of us writers particularly enjoyed the experience. Ken managed to avoid being snapped altogether. Elspeth, to remain sane, took to writing the photographers' commands in her notebook ("Richard, could you--I don't know how to say this--move closer to Elspeth's bum?" is one memorable example) and scribbling unbroadcastable comments on the situation. I'm not sure what kind of expression I wore, but the photographers wrongly concluded that I didn't like having my photo taken and called me "the serious one". It was (you may say) unsatisfactory.

Needless to say, I was less than heartbroken when the PR account director phoned on Friday about further publicity and mentioned that they'd had "a disappointing response from the papers". I was simply glad no incriminating evidence was to be found in the public domain. Still, the renga was great fun.

The Scotsman gets it not quite right again

Imagine my surprise when I clicked on the headline "Poets' work to form basis of city literature collection" in my daily e-mail from The Scotsman and found it was a report of the poems on pillows commission! As you'll see if you read the piece, they've got rather confused about what is being written when and by whom. As I said in the previous post on the subject, there will be seven or eight postcards. Three of them are the poems that Elspeth, Richard and I are writing inpidually, one will be an excerpt from the renga and three are previously published poems by three other poets they've paid for the permission to use. I'm not sure whether the eighth is definite, but it will be a further commissioned poem.

The Scotsman also says that Elspeth, Richard and I are all "city-based". Well, Lithgae's a royal burgh but, in spite of West Lothian Council's plans for expansion, it ain't no city.

Still, good publicity!

Oh Do Desist, Dear Boy

Not that I'm given to watching Sunday morning TV, but I happened to see the art historian Brian Sewell pontificating disdainfully about modern art in churches on BBC 1 this morning. I assume the item, which was part of the Heaven & Earth show, was a brief televisual extension of his BBC Radio 3 show for Christmas week, the rather pompously entitled "Divine Art", which I missed, at least partly by design.

Sewell maintained that "we must insist" on a "spiritual" quality to religious art. The latter term seemed to mean visual art associated directly with Christian worship, which seems a remarkably narrow conception in today's society. However, although the rallying cry might not seem particularly controversial at first sight, it is hopelessly vague. Sewell did not define the "spiritual quality", but as far as I could gather, it is something to do with a sense of mysticism (a term Sewell used), transendence or the ethereal. From his reaction to the Henry Moore piece he lambasted, it certainly seemed to rule out any strong physiciality.

This is one of the most irritating things about Sewell's approach. Christianity in its orthodox forms--and remember, all the pieces he considered were for Christian places of worship--is founded on the belief that God became human in Christ or, to express it slightly differently, that Christ was fully human as well as fully pine. Therefore, the physical is as essential to the faith as the spiritual and ought be as strong an element in Christian art as the spiritual. God's transendence and immanence must be held in tension, if not necessarily in any single artwork then at least across the totality of Christian art.

The other irritatant was that Sewell didn't have anything positive at all to say about the modern and contemporary art he examined, except the grudging acceptance that Moore had at least considered the architectural setting of his altar, unlike another artist he critiqued. Granted, some of his criticisms were justified, but if he had lifted his head above his prejudices and ventured north, he might have found something to shake his disdain in Alison Watt's wonderful, award-winning painting Still in Old St Pauls Episcopal Church in Edinburgh. In this piece, presence and absence, the physical and the spiritual, death and resurrection meet naturally and powerfully. Surely even Brian Sewell could not fail to be moved.

Padel on Difficulty

I like what Ruth Padel has to say about the so-called difficulty of poetry in her comment article last Saturday's Guardian:

Poetry, in other words, is not only good for you, and protects us against meaninglessness: by the pleasure it gives in its artifice, images and imagination, and in the little nudgy sensual relationships between words and sounds that hint at new ideas, poetry augments and reflects our delight in the world.

Isn't it difficult? Not more than we are. Our complicated lives (not to speak of the LCD display on the gym treadmill) are much more difficult than most poems. We are difficult to ourselves, difficult to each other. But OK, yes, some poetic artefacts can be slightly labour-intensive. Wallace Stevens said a poem should "resist the intelligence, almost successfully" and good poems are rarely explicit. They want you to discover what you feel for yourself and don't do simplification. If you simplify, says the Palestinian poet Mourid Barghouti, you "misrepresent what's human at the moment of pretending to celebrate it". Taking "the accessible and the easy" out of the human condition, you "blur that condition instead of defining it".

Draft Culture (Scotland) Bill

The Scottish Executive has published its draft Culture (Scotland) Bill for consultation. This marks an important juncture for arts and culture policy in Scotland, but The Scotsman reports that James Boyle, the head of the Cultural Commission, which the Executive set up to draw up a vision for Scotland's cultural policy, is not at all happy with the draft bill. Likewise, The Herald's report and editorial will not make happy reading for those at Victoria Quay. Something of a contrast with the warm words on the Executive's own site.