A. noted: 'None of the newspapers take anything like a serious attitude to
arts reporting/reviewing....The coverage is events/celebrity led, and nowt
to be done about it.'

This chimed with some sentiments I expressed in a recent interview, and I
reproduce them in order to advance the discussion here:

'Poets are all too human. Whether juggling two jobs or scribbling away the
months on public money they moan that they have no profile. So what? They
should enjoy their freedom from a popular readership; it lets them become
honest writers rather than skilful performers who are defined by audience
response. Do they really want to compromise the self for its billboard
image? If literature is not responsible to and for more than the material
then it is just another dish on the hedonist's menu. Already the novel is
prominently listed on the Specials board; I'm in no hurry to chalk up
poetry.
    No-one is above the conundrum of the world (as Salman Rushdie
discovered) but I'm numb every time I read a newspaper: why does anyone care
about who won where by what when there's a famine, a flood, and the locusts
are coming? The truth is that no one really does; no one knows how to care
now our destiny's technological, everything's taken care of, and we've
ticked the correct box. Wonder why that cover-girl is smiling when she
suspects (correctly) we want to humiliate her? She smiles because the
everyday is where the terrified, over time, become indifferent in every
sense. Writers are not immune so they need to keep their distance from this
newsflash condition.'

Later in the interview I note: '...Modern democracies have abrogated the
notion of citizen for that of consumer. While insisting in its legislative
role on a social contract, the government has become little more than a
regulator of commerce - and an ineffectual one at that. Only those who have
worked to 'establish person' can remove the unjust label 'consumer' that is
sewn on them as a yellow star was on David Vogel, Primo Levi and Paul Celan.
And what sews on that designer label? Television. Echoing Adorno, Neil
Postman observes in 'Amusing Our Selves To Death': "It is in the nature of
the medium that it must suppress the content of ideas in order to.
accommodate the values of show business."
    Because I have production-managed live broadcasts to sixty million
American homes I know how television choreographs sensation instead of
investigating experience. Having toured with her, I'm aware that Janet
Jackson is a modest and honourable woman; unfortunately the media 'superstar
' is a narcotic. The elusive vagrant Poetry won't become one so long as the
received (which is more a brand than a voice) is avoided for the
individuated and therefore authentic.
    However ridiculous it sounds, and however partial my attempts, I work to
preserve the sanctity of the subjective as it is declared in the poem by
opposing a market where effective branding is mistaken for value... Art has
become artefact and the subjective has been objectified so that it has an
exchange-value. But to yoke art to market forces is to subscribe to an
ideology every bit as tyrannical as that of Socialist Realism. I am
heartened when I hear that 'poetry does not sell' - Poetry is not for sale.
    If understanding is a precondition of citizenry then the opposite is
true of consumerism. An indiscriminate mass consumes more than the same
number of realised individuals. And poets must resist the pressure to become
'a product of' this that or the other; instead they must get real. The
strength of poetry in totalitarian states, where it inspires large audiences
who are out for more than enjoyment, suggests that oppression also forces
the authentic voice to develop. If poetry is 'truly democratic' it is so
because of, not in spite of, its ability to individuate.'

David Howard
www.relevents.org