Erminia suggested:
>Can we send instead - for their fair sustainment - monthly provisions of
>10 kg potatoes
>5 kilos rise
>9 kilos pasta (different made)
>20 cans of tomatoes
>350 grams sugar
>2 boxes of Neapolitan coffee
For those of us living off our writing, this would be handy. Some fresh
vegetables might be welcome.
Also: a bottle of Grange Hermitage and a box of cigarettes. Also, two
reams of paper, shoes for children, and money for a haircut and busfares.
Wouldn't mind childcare fees. And what about a book allowance? Oh
damn, can't avoid the filthy lucre.
>But
>that you speak about copyrights in terms of cheques yearly paid by
>publishers
>and yearly received by authors as a (sometimes poor and insufficient)
>compensation for their contribution to the development of the history of
>poetic forms, is something incomprehensible.
>It is just businness.
>The discourse therefore implies the contamination of art by the publishing
>market with the consequent corruption and
>deterioration of just those forms you (the poets) wished to renew: all this
>because the major concern is not art but its retribution.
>I feel that, if this is the concern, then poets would seek employment (any
>imployment) ,
>and that they should be prepared to do any job to
>pay for their life expenses, like lorry drivers do, street cleaners and so
>on....
The retribution of poetry: "I suffered for my art. Now it's your turn..."
I don't know if you've been in the position of _needing_ those (rather
minimal) cheques. If other people are going to make money out of
something I make, I want a cut of it. Especially if I have already
subsidised it by (in my case) deciding that rather than spending my life
building a career, I will instead write poems. Consequently, I don't own
a car, or a house, or anything much except quite an interesting
collection of books and cds and some furniture my mother gave me. I'm
not complaining - nobody forced me to make that choice and most of the
time I manage to survive - but the assumption that it's therefore corrupt
or greedy to wonder how to make a living is somewhat outrageous.
People who _use_ writing tend to make more money from it than those who
make it. I've seldom made as much money from a play as those who acted
in it; nor do I have the luxury of a steady income, like those who might
teach it. (See above about complaining). This only bothers me when I
strike those who make quite a nice living out of the arts (bureaucrats
&c) cocking an eyebrow in surprise at the idea that a _writer_ should
perhaps be paid in the same way as say a marketing expert.
I believe, profoundly, that poetry should be free, the above
notwithstanding. But the insistence on that should perhaps be balanced
with the real subsidising of that freedom that artists tend to routinely
make in order to produce their work at all - and with a respect for that.
I too have problems with the kinds of ridiculous copyright excesses
practised by _publishers_ (writers tend to be sensible about these
things). But I'm all for protecting the rights of writers; they're hard
fought for and easily lost. Like most rights.
Best
Alison
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