I know it's not really this forum's chief area of interest, but who do people think are the main players in the new British (maybe that's English) avant-garde under the age of thirty? Now I mean this as specifically part of the tradition of Cambridge/London (and its diaspora) avant-garde of James, MacSweeney, Milne, Monk, O'Sullivan, Prynne, Raworth, Riley, Wilkinson.

I ask this, because I'm not convinced that the British avant-garde is managing to sustain itself in the way a post 70s generation emerged (those now in their late thirties, early forties and older), and I think young writers are increasingly, if not almost totally, ensconced in the university system.

So who are the new young avant talents and where are they?

I'd throw in Critchley (28) and the Pattisons (but I think they're in their early-30s now).

We might add Sophie Robinson, Steve Willey. Marianne Morris and Jow Lindsay from the Bad Press crew?

James Wilkes and Hannah Silva, but I don't think they'd consider themselves part of the London/Cambridge tradition.

I'm curious to know why writers in these traditions can't / ought not to be working in university environments. Are you suggesting that being outside of academia was a strong part of the aesthetic of these ways of writing?

I'm also interested to know why you don't mention Chris McCabe (though he is 30 now, I suppose) - he may be diversifying, but a sizeable part of his work can still be traced back to these traditions, can't they, or do you think they are mostly from elsewhere, Europe for instance?

I can't add any to your list, Critchley, Lindsay, Robinson and Wilkes being the ones that came to mind. I haven't seen Paul Batchelor's book yet, but he seems to be strongly influenced by MacSweeney, though perhaps not BM in his most experimental phases.

I think Critchley is writing less in the UK traditions and increasingly more in the style of certain PDE American poets like Wheeler, Harvey and Shaughnessy, or perhaps it's more accurate to say she shares some of their more innovative influences (Mayer, Guest, Scalapino?). No surprise then that I increasingly like her work and am looking forward to her first full collection when she finds a publisher for it and no doubt it will feature much of the more recent work rather than go back to the more 'Cambridgey' work in the Arehouse chapbooks from her early 20s.

I think another idea to consider is whether universities are the only places where young writers first encounter poetry in these specific traditions. There are things happening here and there in rooms above pubs, but frankly, not a great deal of it and it's a fair bet any poet under 30 in those rooms has been introduced to those modes of writing at Cambridge, Sussex, Exeter or other universities where there are significant tutors.

A clued-up young innovative poet at the moment would more likely be looking to America for current excitement and with hindsight to their vigorous C20 movements. Most of the poets you name above, Chris, are not from the previous generation, but two or three generations above today's student-age poets. Otherwise, they might be influenced by more recent British poets who are, to various extents, non-mainstream but who do not belong (either aesthetically or socially, and the latter is a crucial, perhaps central, aspect of this discussion) to the traditions mentioned in the initial post, poets such as Matthew Welton, Claire Crowther, Jen Hadfield, Andy Brown, Tim Cumming, Giles Goodland, Matthew Caley, Luke Kennard, Maggie Hannan, Melanie Challenger, Sandra Tappenden, John Stammers and Mark Ford.

Perhaps it's not at all surprising that the Cambridge and London schools, both of which peaked long ago, are not attracting many new acolytes, and few if any from outside academic pockets. The modernist tradition, especially in the UK, has never been close to being a straight or continuous line. Perhaps it's more pertinent to think of the 'Cambridge / London avant garde' not as a tradition but as movements within a broader tradition, largely bound by time frames and social groupings. Aspects of the work will remain influential, some involved will maintain the aesthetics and styles, but we shouldn't expect them to thrive any more so than The Movement or the Mersey Poets.

Hi Roddy,

I don't put Chris in those avant traditions, although he's well-versed in them (no pun intended) his reading is much wider and less politically condensed, in the manner of Barque for example. He's a political poet, but with wider social and community concerns than traditional neo-Marxist Bush bashing.

I think there's an innovative strand in London which is outside the academy and has some connections with Writers Forum and Resonance FM and those performative innovative networks.

I think there's a strong Cambridge/Sussex strand which does still argue for its lineage in the 60s nexus I mentioned. I'm pretty sure Keston would see himself as a continuation of that tradition which still looks to the US for its natural allegiances.

I think there is pretty strong evidence that many practitioners within the more defined Mottram/Prynne web, are housed in universities and gravitated to those institutions because of the innovative traditions still supported there. Certainly at Cambridge that is inextricably linked with progressive left wing politics in a way that Cambridge based progressive left wing politics is not linked with poetry. A discontinuity between politics students and poets. Neither keeping company, but both sharing an idée fixe.

I share your hypothesis that the Cambridge school is now over. I think it ended with Keston leaving for Sussex. There are some vestiges, Sam Ladkin, Neil Pattison and others, but they strike me as now part of a Sussex-centred faction. If it can be satisfactorily called that.

I do think that the writing up of this, BPR --> Cambridge Poetry --> Glasgow scene --> Sussex rather misses the picture you're accurately describing. I think there are several innovative cells that are still linked to the US, and some CW centres strike alliances there, Jebb in Bedfordshire, Dell Olsen at Royal Holloway leans towards innovative women poets and performance. Dartington still holds out. What I see is that there is a tendency for those working within institutions to work within them, rather than seek audiences outside of them. And the validation tends to come from a practice-based historiography, and a kind of self-imposed isolation. In fact I'd go further and suggest that much of the university-based avant-garde has almost totally retreated from the general poetry audience. It's only concerned with an internal readership and its examination in pure academic literary terms. Perhaps that's too strident a view, but if you're outside of the key institutions you could be forgiven for never having heard of these people. There's no outreach. No reader development. It's either very worrying or of no consequence, depending on your stance.

I don't know if it's exclusively linked to the US, but there's a little cell of innovative writing here in Manchester - James Davies, with his ifpthenq magazine (and the wonderful Marchbox series); Parameter magazine and the The Other Room reading series.

We have Scott Thurston & Robert Shepherd in the area; and Mathew Welton has connections to innovative writing (neo-Oulipean).

I go to a poetry group, and there's a young chap there called Richard Barrett (I think he might have joined us...) who is very much investigating the Black Mountain tradition of Olson. I don't think it's quite as political as Cambridge/London innovative writing; but it's probably more interesting for being less fixed.

A comment I heard from Geraldine Monk this weekend: "what's a writer's biography going to be like in the future? School, college, university job, death. Maybe they'll fit all the interesting stuff into the gap year. And the affairs with students."

I'm reminded of Kenneth Koch's comment about "the myths, the misses and the mid-terms..."

Maybe a job for the Strangler...

I think any talk of “avant-garde traditions" is misleading and contradictory (aren’t avant-gardes meant to reject tradition rather than create it?). Mainly, it puts poets into categories which blur their particular qualities. “Cambridge 1960s” was a very diverse collection of persons (as their anthology, “A Various Art” plainly insisted) whose ways of writing led in distinct and sometimes opposed directions. And anyway it wasn’t avant-garde. It was more serious than that. Poetry from “Cambridge/Sussex” now bears almost no resemblance to what went on in the 1960s, the reading of politics into poetry is completely different, it is involved in performance and it is wilfully avant-garde. (Interesting that as this “tradition” ages its name changes from that of a town to that of a university -- I mean I don’t suppose Bexhill-on-Sea comes into it very much. Only four of the 17 poets in “A Various Art” were in universities (plus 5 taught at what were then technical colleges or similar). The London-Cambridge avant-garde competition was the result only of the fierce antagonism of two men, whose names have already been mentioned. There were plenty of poets of those generations connected with neither of those labels with just as much right to be considered innovative (Lee Harwood, Thomas A Clark, Peter Dent, Colin Simms etc. etc... not to forget the Irish)

That’s the main trouble really, that thinking poetry in this instant-history kind of way conceals poets who don’t fit the categories. Even if it’s disconnected from the poetry world at large, the “Sussex” tribe has its own academic publicity machine and its own international specialist audience. Others, younger and older, are undeservedly cast into outer darkness because they don’t “belong” anywhere, including any "avant-garde"

Peter

Peter

Theoretically, yes. But a lot of avant gardes after awhile start looking like one another... most especially when they start arguing among themselves about who is the most avant...

traditions evolve. It's when they become fixed in aspic that they're bad things. Or when some self-proclaimed expert tries to fix them in aspic.

I don't agree with this at all; in fact, I strongly disapprove of such statements of no-confidence in British poetry. There are plenty of exciting things going on in the UK - and indeed in Europe - without us needing to urge young poets to look to America for inspiration.

If that's how you feel personally about British poetry, fair enough. But it's not such a great thing to be so vehemently promoting the idea that Britain is a crap place to be an innovative young poet and that America is where it's at, poetically-speaking. For a start, it's simply not true.

Hmmm...

I suspect that there may be interesting and exciting things going on in British poetry, but I don't think it's happening among those who confine themselves to reading just British poetry. In fact, I suspect that those who confine themselves to just British poetry will end up going down the same cul-de-sac as the Movement went down. Nice, safe, unchallenging stuff.

British poetry has always benefitted from being international, and frankly gone down when it went all insular. Without Petrach and Baccaccio, Chaucer wouldn't have been such a great poet. Half of Shakespeare's plots came from abroad. Coleridge learnt from Goethe.

I don't think it's just America, though. There are interesting things going on in Australia, in Europe, in Canada, in Latin America, in the Far East, all over the world. I think that the most exciting poets writing in England at the moment are the ones with the most international awareness, and those who make connections across the borders are more likely to be writing interesting work. I read a fair amount of Arab poetry because of having a sub to Banipal magazine; and a fair amount of American literature of course, but also Australian. Then there's poets like Tomas Salamun, or Wyslawa Symborska, Venus Khouri-Gatta (Lebanon/France).

I don't want to do down British poetry; I just think there's a big world out there, and we're part of it. Trying to pretend we're not leads to insularity.

I'm not saying we shouldn't be international, Steven, or we shouldn't read other poetries. I'm saying let's have a little national pride.

Is that such a bad thing? Clearly to some people ...

Also, I still dispute this irritating notion that British poetry can only ever be safe and dull. That's an idea that comes almost entirely from a couple of dud epochs in the last century. British poetry has a long and glorious tradition; why let a few turnip-heads give it a bad name?

Of course Britain has a long and glorious tradition - I don't think anyone would wish to deny it - but it's when it gets insular that it gets dull. It was pretty dull before the Romantics, too; but they were internationalist in outlook as well as being very British. The influence of translation on British poetry is profound: Homer, Virgil, Dante, Sappho, to name just four. And is Beowulf British or European, or both?

The best British poets probably are the ones that look both ways: outward and inward. Basil Bunting, for instance; or Roy Fisher; MacDiarmuid (at his best), etc.

I can sort of share the distrust of looking exclusively to American influence, however; not that we can't learn from greats like Olson and Pound and Oppen, but that we shouldn't be overwhelmed by them. Some of the best British innovative poets have learnt from such people; but are also very much their own British selves. Lee Harwood is a good example. A very British poet, to my mind. But internationalist in outlook.

Misconstrued as ever! <_< Did it not cross your mind that someone without confidence in current UK poetry would hardly be working away on its definitive anthology!?

"A clued-up young innovative poet at the moment would more likely be looking to America for current excitement..."

...by which I clearly mean poets in the area the thread is on. I'm not sure there is anyone who thinks post-avant writing is thriving in the UK at the moment, especially among younger poets. Meanwhile, I think we have a particularly strong field of innovative poets in the US at the moment, though (and you can only generalise about such a big market) things have swung away from both far ends and centre, hence the buzz phrase Post-Division Era. Suits me fine, because I love poetry which revels in strangeness and association but which retains lyricism.

Misunderstanding though, did lead to an interesting discussion...

"Suits me fine, because I love poetry which revels in strangeness and association but which retains lyricism." (how do you get these quotes into those neat little boxes?)

So do I, and I don't know why you think Britain is short of it. Have you looked for it? Obviously there isn't going to be much of it in your "definitive anthology" if you can't find it, is there!

P

Hi Peter, here's how to get those neat boxes for your quotation.

Highlight and copy the bit you want to quote.

When you hit 'Add Reply' you'll see a number of buttons above your slot: CODE, LIST, QUOTE etc.

Hit the QUOTE button, and you'll see this appear in your reply slot: [QUOTE]

Paste in the bit you've copied below this, then hit QUOTE again to close the box.

Feel free to suggest some writers Peter - my anthology is open to all poets who published their first full collection from 2000 and poets under 50 who published theirs in the mid to late 90s. By all means suggest some names I may have missed.

I'm more worried about poets from the innovative side of things refusing to be in my anthology - I've already had one problem with this, sadly. I have this sinking feeling that an anthology which does reflect the full spectrum of poetry in UK/I - despite the moans about previous generational anthologies (MoMO, TNP, Graywolf) - is anathema to some innovative poets.

Have I looked for it? Well, I have already spoken to several pertinent people about it in case there are things I have missed. They have been very helpful.

But it's not as if I am not interested and knowledgeable. Peter, have you read my posts above? How many other mainstream poets do you know who can confidently chat about work by Critchley, Lindsay, McCabe and Wilkes? Indeed, can you? And why aim your grump at me rather than answering Chris who is asking far tougher questions about the current state of UK LIP?

That seems to be a pertinent point. To what extent will this 'post-division era' (or whatever) poetics require movement from both 'sides' - sorry, I know that's reductionist - to flourish. Or doesn't it matter? Perhaps the 'post-division' stuff has its own course, which flows independently of camps/schools/sides.

I'm not expecting everyone to buy the idea of a PDE, especially here when it would be fanciful to talk about a division in a way which implies anything close to a 50-50 split. PDE is an American thing, though it has its resonances here where many of the UK's younger innovative poets are not influenced by and some not even interested in the limited field of writers listed in Chris' initial post. PDE is about poems and not theory.

It's also about new poets, whether young or not, taking influences from both innovative and more traditional styles. And the assumption is that UK/I poets are more organic in their styles and less prone to making conscious decisions about adopting modes of writing. That doesn't mean there aren't individual influences - it's not difficult to find those who are evidently influenced by say Duffy, Paterson or Hill (S or G).

But reading Legitimate Dangers, it's clear that US poetry does have dominant modes and that most dominant are the various strands of elliptical / associative narrative which are associated with the term PDE, whether that, on one hand, means poets such as Joshua Beckman and Maurice Manning whose innovative slants are less to do with syntax and procedure or the poets around Fence, a magazine and press deliberately set up to present poets weary of previous divisions, or poets such as Matthea Harvey and DA Powell who more closely belong to innovative traditions but would probably not pass the clipboard tests of the ageing beatniks.

But I don't expect movement from the Barque, Bad Press or Arehouse camps - their stances are to be admired I think and I don't think they owe anything to the 'general reader' in terms of seeking an audience, or what Chris calls 'outreach'. They don't have an onus to compromise themselves or their readers in an exchange of views; the danger with such positions is when there is definition by what you are not, which always backfires.

It's a very odd poet who doesn't want to be more widely read and I suspect that, in a climate where even accessible poetry sometimes struggles to have an impact in terms of sales and audiences, it must be difficult to persuade people to read and listen to less accessible work. I have twice recently been to 'mixed genre' readings and watched the audience leave for the bar during the experimental poets (and heard the disdain of those who patiently stayed).

Rod--

Sorry there was a misunderstanding here, as I didn't realize that your anthology was 1st-book-post-2000, thus obviously mostly very young poets. It seemed disturbing that somebody was editing what I thought was a general "definitive anthology" and saying that not much was happening in certain zones (however defined) which might be where my own interest is centrally placed.

I've thought for a long time that most of the really interesting British poets are following their own courses somewhere between the howls of the avant-garde and the smooth chat of the stardom poets, and get badly ignored, but most of these are at least 50 years old and the younger ones mostly seem to have had their first book before 2000. I must be getting out of touch with youth. The badly neglected Michael Ayres for instance turned out to have a first book in 1994. But ignoring pamphlets/chapbooks I could mention Andrew Brewerton, Helen Macdonald, Elisabeth Bletsoe, Peter Manson, Nicholas Potamitis...

You're quite right to claim that most editors of 'definitive anthologies' would not have got anywhere near so far as to consider people likes Emily Critchley...

But I can understand certain poets not being willing to be in a 'definitive anthology' simply because they don't believe in the definition. I.e. they don't believe that what is happening can be found by a sampling of all the various alternatives, but that there are right and wrong ways to create poetry, for ideological and/or aesthetic reasons, and the wrong should not be promoted as part of the general condition, but ignored as irrelevant to it. We may not agree with this but it's a respectable and traditional belief.

Peter

Hi Peter,

I think "neglect" needs some unpacking. All the writers you mention have been published, so at one level, they've been attended to in ways that 10s of thousands of other poets haven't been. But I think there's something more substantial in the idea of neglect. One might consider critical neglect, though most books and poets are poorly served by the diminishing critical apparatus in the UK. That's not due to the neglect of critics so much as the neglect of readers. If we turn the question around and ask how have these poets neglected their readers we might find another range of interesting questions.

If we move away from critical appraisal, we might consider the publicity machines of publishers and the wider industry. Here, the development of personas, of constructed choices is more apparent and the nexus of relationships between poets, their entourages, their employers, supporters, tutors and the like, form more complex structures for supporting talent. We can look at how the poets you mention work within these structures, how they relate to them, which courses they teach, which workshops they run, which grants they apply for, which development agency they work with and so on. How much journalism they write, which competitions they judge, which festivals they read at, how many readings they give in general, that whole set of human interrelationships that is such an integral part of British poetry, and perhaps poetry worldwide. I often wonder who is neglecting whom there.

Then we might consider the neglect of readers, and why some books (most books) fail. Why some poets don't have many readers, or don't have any readers. Or we could ask how poets find and work with their readers, how they develop readerships. One might reflect on whether the poet is being neglected or the reader is. I think in many cases there is a mythology around neglect, something closer to the hope for advocacy, and a feeling of missing out on one's slices of cake. The longer I work in the field, the more I see that the critical issue is how the poet puts the reader at the centre of their concerns. So much of the infrastructural imbalances, the inequality in the balance of resources in the poetry business, can be bypassed by connecting with readers. No one other than the writer is ultimately responsible for their readership. I think most poets are poorly taught in this respect. If they looked across at their neighbours in other genres they might see a clearer picture of how to find and keep readers.

Clearly, one facet of this (though not the poets you list) is that some writers aren't worth reading, and their work fails. Or fails to support a reason to publish them. Obviously no one can be successfully published without their being some demand for their writing.

If I have one anxiety in the context of this thread, it's that most of the British avant-garde has neglected its general readership or suffers with a peculiar myopia about its audience. There's simply too much insularity, too much obsession with production and not reception. It's the difference between selling 50 books or 5,000.

Interesting. A number of my friends left Sussex (mentioned a few times on this thread) as budding novelists, always with a vision of what would sell and what would work. None of them wanted to write a prize winner - all of them wanted to write a best seller (although none of them has - one has turned his life into a piece of installation art, one has become a Buddhist Monk and practitioner of Chinese medicine and another works in University administration). They were very clear from the beginning that being a novelist is a lottery dependant on gaining the attention of agents long before publishers. I wonder if novelists are sometimes 'poorly taught' to the other extreme - seeking their audience before developing their individual talent? Is there a balance? Who is responsible for teaching this?

I always say that the writing comes first. Its impulses ought to be generous, to impart something to the reader, to offer a gift to the reader. From this impulse a number of things flow. The range, diversity, quality of experiences the writer can call upon will be limited by their skills and sensibility, and those skills will in part determine the scope and typology of their audience. I think that writers when they discover their audience, write into it. They may not do this consciously, but some do. The audience can exert a pressure on a writer, to repeat tricks, they often give the writer permission to do something. Agents are growing in abundance and their job is to find talent they can sell to publishers for often astonishing sums of money, many 10s of millions in advances. This is speculation. It's a high risk gamble that the talent which has been identified can deliver a product which meets a specific market. Often the deal will pivot upon the book being rewritten for a clearly identified market, a subgenre of one sort or another. The writer is expected to tailor their work to fit a category of successful publishing because the bookselling industry recognises forms of writing by the success of such categories and both reinforces such subgenres: misery, chick lit, lad lit, nostalgia and so on, and is responding to perceived demands. I think in some respects this happens in poetry, too. When an editor says, "Drop the experimental stuff, focus on this, leave out that ..." we're steering writing into a market. The world of writing will always be larger than the world of publishing simply because it's possible to write anything, but we can only publish a small subset. Fashion changes, of course, and most markets are about fashion. Tastes change. I think one should be wary of writing for a market, but one should expect that the readership will force a selection upon what it's possible to publish. Writers can extend the scope of their readership, of course. We want to join a writer on a journey, but readerships are often conservative in nature, and so those extensions, diversions, changes of direction need to be carefully judged. Seeking to be read ought to be a central concern for every writer though.

Chris--

All that's OK for some but I have to say that I don't think a poet's duties extend to anything beyond sitting at a desk somewhere writing poetry. As far as I'm concerned that's the beginning and the end of a poet's duties. The reader is of course integral to the act of writing, the reader is posited in that act and in a sense formed by it. This reader is the one who will seek out the poetry he/she needs. The market must consist principally of readers who are somehow persuaded that this is what they need.

But does your pragmatical approach really mean that that is not enough, and that the poet, whatever his or her condition or skills has a further duty to start running round all over the western world drumming up readers by mounting spectacles of him/her self? That someone is good at writing poetry surely doesn't necessarily mean she is also good at workshops, networking, manipulating the subsidy routines, even reading to an audience. She might be absolutely dreadful at those things, or simple have an abhorrence of them, and what happens then? In what sense has she failed as a poet, rather than failed as a publicist?

And I can't help expressing a certain amount of contempt for the purposeful career-building poet. I've seen them at work, and it's somewhat nauseating.

Actually at least some of the 'avant-garde' in UK and USA is extremely efficient at career-building and self-publicity in its own terms. They may not admit it but they are very much working a market, one which they create themselves by a skilful interlocking of academic demands, ideology and politics, and a poetry which is unkind to the reader, which is held to be integral to the ideological perspective.

And it's surely fairly obvious that writing bad poetry doesn't necessarily prevent you from achieving tremendous market success, though most of the 'top' poetry these days isn't very bad, it's just rather uninteresting.

Peter

Hi Peter!

I think this is a key difference between writing outside of publication and writing for publication. There's absolutely nothing wrong at all with amateurs writing without wanting to be read. But when you want to be published then you have a different set of responsibilities, especially when under contract. Markets are people, and a writer must be interested in people if they want to be successfully published. I'm not really convinced of the argument where publication is concerned that writers write and aren't to bother with their audience. Or rather, that's not the kind of writer I can personally financially support.

Self-serving careerists can be nauseating (that's a strong word!), yes, but I don't want to confuse that with any decent writer seeking a relationship with their audience. Not all writers are decent human beings of course. When I take my kids to a reading by their favourite children's author, or attend a workshop, or a reading in a pub, or a festival, I don't think of those writers as anything other than committed.

There's absolutely nothing wrong with writers not wanting to be read. I just don't publish those.

I suppose what I'm saying is that if a writer wants publication, then writing is not enough.

Interesting ping-pong match. Let me add my own back-spin. I read Helen Macdonald's 'Shaler's Fish' (Etruscan Books) a few years back and made the effort, on the back of my interest in her poetry, to travel down to London specifically to hear her read at an event organised by Roddy at the Poetry Cafe, as I recall. It was a useful and elucidatory experience which left me wanting to read more of her work.

During the interval, I got my book signed by Helen, expressed my admiration for her poetry and asked if she'd like to be interviewed by me - via email, not in person - for Intercapillary Space. She said yes, and seemed happy enough with the idea at the time, but then never replied - or perhaps once, in an oddly monosyllabic way - to my subsequent emails.

I still admire her work, naturally, but when I hear people complain that HM is a 'neglected' talent I do have to wonder whether that's entirely the fault of the general poetry readership.

Hi Chris--

What I'm saying is, though, that "seeking a relationship with your audience" is part of the process of writing, rather than a subsequent exercise. Whether the writing 'welcomes' the reader or not. Whether it treats the relationship as a true meeting of minds rather than an assertion of self. If it does posit a valid relationship, it should find its readers, with a little help. This is perhaps somewhat idealistic.

[There's absolutely nothing wrong with writers not wanting to be read. I just don't publish those.][/QUOTE]

Is there really any such creature? I can think of poets, quite a few, whose writing is designed to repel the reader, but this seems to work quite well as a market item, perhaps indicating some perversity in the current condition.

[I suppose what I'm saying is that if a writer wants publication, then writing is not enough.
][/QUOTE]
Maybe not, but in that case we need to know what's changed and why. Because it has been enough for centuries. Hasn't it normally been assumed to be the publisher's job to promote? Why has that duty been passed back to the author?

And it's not all that easy. You get a book published by a "poetry press" (never mind which) and you ask "Shall we have a launch?" --Can't afford that. "Will you arrange a reading for me in York?" -- No, can't do do that. "Where is the book being advertised?" -- On our website. "Where else?" --Nowhere. "What's the American promotion?" -- The what? So I have to undertake all this myself? Suppose I'm a fully employed non-academic bricklayer with no expendable income to speak of and anyway I've got a severe stutter and a travel phobia?

See what I mean?

Peter

This is a fair point, but I think it should be the case that those with an abhorrence of workshops, readings etc should not take part in them, yet filthy lucre wins nearly every time. Two young friends of mine were tutored by a very good post-avant poet at a leading university recently and there was a whole term of workshops with her where she refused to critique the students' poems because she fundamentally disagrees with the idea of a workshop!

Hi Peter,

Yes, I can see that can be a part of writing, but in very many instances, that attitude is never translated into a practical reality. The writing is still only part of the process, and I'd suggest it always has been. When writers practically want readers, then other things kick in.

Yes, I think there are plenty of writers who don't wish to be read, and maybe more who think that this is someone else's problem. I can't see anything wrong with this at all. As a publisher, you just choose which of the brilliant horses to back.

I don't think anything has changed, in the sense that writers have sought audiences long before publishers were around, and their audiences belong to them not to the publishers, which is why publishers seek writers out who have a readership, and why agents spend time trying to move writers to other publishers (it is certainly cheaper than trying to find readers for someone).

It's certainly true that publishers strive to bring readers to writers, too (that must be a core function). But if the writer leaves the publisher, the audience isn't wholly left behind, most go with the author. The seven million Harry Potter purchasers aren't signing up to Bloomsbury. It's arguable that Bloomsbury found them all, I'd say the writer did most of the work there. But there's no doubt that there's a symbiotic relationship in building audience, but it's really down to the writer in the end: if their books are worth reading people will come. The publisher is perhaps a conduit, though not a passive one. (God, I'm an active conduit!)

Launches don't really sell books: they lose money on the whole, but they're not about sales, they're about celebration, at an average cost of £400 they more than wipe out the profit for the first six months and possibly all the profit entirely. Advertising isn't terrifically important either, in fact it's a waste of money for most poetry. This is largely true with reviews, they add context to the climate of reception, but they don't determine sales, unless they're in broadsheets. With Web sites, the people visiting are often the target market, so clever Web marketing is a good idea. We get around 12.4 million hits a year and it generates about £60K of direct sales, and almost certainly pushes people into book stores, too. British authors don't sell well in the US unless its into what we might call coterie markets, the sales will be negligible, and it's almost certainly the case that a direct marketing approach via the Web or email will soak up 80% of them. Most poetry markets are deeply conservative. Transatlantic sales are often quite meagre. It very much depends on the author's contemporary reputation in a given market.

For poetry publishers, I think the Web is the most powerful tool they have at their disposal. That and trade sales are vital. But the formula remains: the right book by the right author will drive the business forward.

The main issue for publishers is to actually try to sell the book proactively, not passively. If you get the balance of Web marketing and traditional direct selling right, then sales will increase if the author has an audience out there. If the author has no audience, then readings, publicity, journalism, blogs, reviews, feature writing, radio, social networking all play a part and it's a good idea to plan a strategy with your publisher to do all these things in concert.

In my recent experience I'd say that the key driver for writers these days is publicity and seeking/managing it is a vital component in any marketing strategy. This has changed in today's world, in that in order to succeed now, one has to do an awful lot more, and the more one does, the more one sells. To be an author now is certainly not just about writing. That's simply a given. The world is full of great writing with no sales.

I'd add, never underestimate what the reader actually wants. And of course, it's their job to create the literature. You can't have literature without them, except in some historical sense.

Yes, I understand and respect that belief, though I believe (I know) anthologies lead to a wider readership and most poets want to have that (and the payment of course). If my anthology had a couple of token non-mainstream poets, then I could understand those poets being cautious about their inclusion, but there will be a wide spectrum because that reflects my tastes and not because I am ticking the boxes and joining the dots of that spectrum (excuse the mixed metaphor!). Critics don't like wide selection anthologies because they like to see some mast-nailing, but readers do prefer them and I aim to serve readers with this anthology and not poets or critics. I'll be disappointed if anyone says no to being included* and will of course be suitably livid if some critic from the non-mainstream rails at me for not including those people who have refused!

'Definitive' is just a bit of sales talk. As much as I mean it, I'm indicating that it is my own attempt to define a period in UK/I poetry. It will certainly not be 'definitive' in the sense of following consensus, though consensus is an contributory factor.

*incidentally, Chris, what's your take on this as a publisher? I have never been asked if I wanted to be included in an anthology (I'm approaching poets in all cases as new work from most of them is a feature of the book) and indeed anthologies pop through the letterbox once or twice a year (the latest from MTV of all things) without me knowing I was to be included. I do know of one very well-known poet though who has an arrangement with their publisher that they need to personally agree to all anthology inclusions. Is that common? I imagine only very big-sellers can go for that - I'm fairly sure that somewhere in my contract it says that my publisher has the right to place my work in anthologies. I've only once been dubious about inclusion, when a somewhat ambiguous, at most agnostic, poem of mine was included in an anthology of 'religious poetry'.

My authors grant me a license to deal with third parties for anthologies, I've never turned one down, in some cases I've actively participated, when invited, in submitting work. I'm completely in favour of anthologies and, like you, Roddy, I don't believe they should be made to serve writers, but readers. Readers love anthologies.

So I don't consult my authors at all on this matter. I've never had to make a quality decision around dubious anthologies, I've just never been presented with that.

I must say I don't really like all the snootiness around the issue, most of the negative stuff I've heard was plainly silly and weak-minded, or grandiose in a perverse sort of way. The grandstanding is a bit like saying all our poetry readers are stupid, which they're not.

As you know, Roddy, I'd have leapt at doing this anthology with you, it was just financially beyond Salt.

Thanks for those names Peter - I'm comparatively knowledgeable on my UK innovative poetry, but inevitably there are many gaps in my knowledge (Archive of the Now is a great help). I've had interesting discussions with Simon Smith and Richard Price lately and Chrises McCabe and Emery have offered to suggest some names too.

I really like what I've seen of Bletsoe's work and will be buying her recent book, but her first books came out before my cut off point (which is 1995). Manson and Macdonald are already on my list of possible inclusions and the latter will certainly be in the book if I can track her down (I've had no luck so far). Potamitis doesn't have a full collection yet - I'm going to see him read in a fortnight. I don't know Brewerton's work - will investigate.

The kind of problem I have with that structure, Chris, is, for example, that some poets are so good at all those post-writing, promotional things, which I dare say you are right that writers need to do, that they get promoted to the top of the structure, and get to be very powerful. And they're mediocre poets with minimal understanding of what the potential of poetry is. And they issue statements and reviews, and edit big-selling periodicals and anthologiesand give lectures which are circulated everywhere, (some of them are not poets at all), and the messages they give out are damaging, to other poets and to the idea of poetry.

And that in the society of poetry that they create others seeking to promote themselves on different terms don't get much of a look in and promote themselves but a few inches, because the big names have conditioned what people will hear as poetry and what kind of person a poet is expected to be (e.g. sociable, charming, well-behaved, middle-class, semi-intellectual, professionally adept, etc. etc.)

And a society of poetry-success is created based on the promotion more than the poetry, and becomes very easily a cosy self-sustaining routine of regular work, which dominates public perception of the scene and excludes difference. "Hello Virginia darling how nice to see you for the 25th time at the Heaton Mersey Poetry Festival..." you know what I mean. I think this is the death of poetry (though not the only one).

And that if the getting of readers depends entirely on those self-advancing structures (as perhaps it always has) those kinds of poets are the ones who will get to the most influential positions (as I don't think they always have).

Peter

I've agreed with much of what you've said Peter, but this reeks of 'middle-class, semi-intellectual' condescension: the poor, impressionable public being 'conditioned' by the genteel poetry mafia. Come on! You might give the tiny percentage of people who actually buy and read the stuff some credit. I don't need to supply examples of well-known poets to refute this silliness. Stop, think, and they'll occur to you.

Hmm - there seem to be quite a lot of 'different' poets in positions of influence...

The Director of the Poetry Society is an innovative poet. As are the current and the previous Librarians at the Poetry Library. As is, of course, the editor of Britain's most productive poetry publisher. And a quick run through the biogs on Archive of the Now and the Salt and Shearsman sites will show you that a high percentage of innovative poets (higher than among mainstream poets) are in influential positions such as being dons, professors and creative writing heads.

Having said that I do accept that there is an amount of conditioning that goes on that means poets from outside the mainstream lose out - I doubt there will be much innovative poetry at any of the major poetry festivals this or any year, or that you will hear any on Radio 4, or that there will be any in the school curriculum. Many tutors will not show their classes a single non-mainstream poem, term after term. I fear a creeping commercialism in the 'big lists' - not that I expect them to sign up Lindsay or Critchley (that sort of poetry has never been in their domain) and they are 'commercial lists', but even 5-10 years ago I had more confidence that editors would select the poets they rated and not ones given the tick by the marketeers and accountants upstairs.

I also realise that a shallow pool of judges means that innovative poets rarely if ever make it onto prize and award shortlists (and I don't buy that innovative poets aren't open to prizes and awards!) and that many anthologists tend to be blind to anything non-mainstream.

Well, five out of six ain't bad. I'll never accept being diagnosed as middle class though some might think otherwise of someone who works ten hours a week and lives in a leafy corner of Blackheath with a partner (also fiercely working class in spirit) with a prestigious publishing job and a Siamese and two horses! I think it's how you define yourself though - I've never started a thread about class and poetry here as it's bound to go to hell in a hand-basket very quickly - still taboo.

I've never quite understood the argument (or is it just a taunt?) that mainstream poets are on the whole less intellectual than innovative ones. I've encountered it quite frequently. I presume it springs from some crumb of pretzel logic that holds that difficult poetry is more difficult to write or is more contextually tied to other cerebral disciplines.

It sits at Number Two in the Things We All Know About Mainstream Poets list, just behind the supposition that we concoct and contort our poems just to gratify our audiences and editors (something that would never happen in the post-avant world of course!). I'd be interested to know who exactly is going to let WN Herbert, Geoffrey Hill, Eavon Boland and Michael Hofmann know that they are 'semi-intellectual'.

Apologies for brief off-topic post, but I wanted to add that in fact, the average age of poets so far selected is early 40s, probably sparked by the fact that poetic debuts in the 00s are generally by older poets than in the 90s. The anthology also includes fifteen or so 'younger' poets (Farley, Price, Morrissey, Oswald and others) who debuted between 95 and 99.

It isn't really about innovative and mainstream, is it. It's about difference itself. A number of extremely successful poets recently have demonstrated an extreme intolerence of difference, quite viciously in fact, virtually issuing health warnings against buying and reading the work of poets of some particular (ill-defined) caste. But you don't have to be mainstream or populist to do that: the élitist experimentalists do it with equal fervour, albeit among themselves.

When does self-promotion not implicitly entail the demotion of others? Sometimes perhaps. But the essays and reviews put out these days by those who are able to grab the major print-spaces, especially the "It's a really healthy scene and all these nice people are writing lovely poems" kind, always seem to me to imply severe put-downs, not only by exclusion.

What's needed is an educated readership which will resist these publicity machines and go seeking its own poetry without waiting to be given reading-lists, without relying on prizes, festivals, newspapers etc., to tell them what they're interested in. And yes, I know there are such readers, who resist the conditioning, and what's more they are probably the ones who do most of the serious buying. I think there could be more of them, and the alternatives available could be more widely made known. Isn't this (Chris,) where the publishers need to direct their energies?

Generally I prefer not to think about "well-known poets", I find it depressing.

Peter