Alison says
> At the same time, I do tire of the hallucination
> that somewhere out there in never never land is a huge audience for poetry,
> just waiting for the right advertising campaign.
I think I'd rather have a small but devoted audience who don't
need advertising campaigns.
I'd rather not have an audience solely composed of other poets, though,
and I do like to see poems used as public art, in trains for example,
and published in mainstream publications. Not because they advertise
poetry, but simply because people might enjoy reading them.
Events like National Poetry Month (here in Australia there is
a National Poetry Week) can give people a focus and a time-frame
for working together. If promoting poetry gives more poets a chance
to be heard, and encourages them to work at writing better poetry,
I'd say that's a good thing. Of course it may encourage
a lot of mediocre poetry, too - but you might argue that to get
some good poetry we have to put up with a lot of mediocre poetry.
I don't know about that, though.
Special "Months" and "Weeks" shouldn't be an excuse for those who
are interested in poetry to do nothing for the rest of the year.
(Think of Mother's Day!)
Janet
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Janet Jackson
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www.arach.net.au/~huxtable/janet
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