Phil Jupitus was 'Porky the Poet' who performed and published zines at the 
close of the punk era. Unlike now, however bad the work, it spoke of others 
and was outward looking. "Making it" is far more than ego: creativity 
happens in a media bubble that reflects prevailing ideologies - more now 
than back when.

Contrast Kate Tempest with her contemporary, the Leicester-based 
singer/songwriter Grace Petrie. Grace came to my attention when she sung 
against the hike in student fees outside Nick Clegg's office and has been 
performing at demonstrations since. All her work is about people in 
struggle - about others' situations and stories, rather than any 
introspection. Contrast Grace with Kate's poem about her sister 'Laura,' 
which is essentially about herself with Laura as the go-between to herself.

I'm not so worried about the tags of popularity or accessibility but Kate's 
poetry is poor as poetry, rap or song precisely because of self indulgence 
(Grace has a cause, Kate has herself). The "I" poems have come back as the 
voice of the poet, rather than being another's voice or voices or even 
tangential to the self. All thereby becomes "inside the box" as much as X 
Factor is. Emotion is on the sleeve and places middle class individualism 
centre stage.

Yet, of course, I agree with much said on this strand: from neo-liberalism 
to UKIP, from the tabloids to the BBC and The Guardian, from all the 
instruments of state, The Next Generation has been pulled by this generation 
(my generation) towards the idea of an all embracing culture - William 
Morris and One Direction handcuffed together (strip politics from Morris and 
strip youth's struggle from the dumb ones). It should rightly make many 
angry, especially as the conceit is so visible.

Drive into Norwich and you'll learn that my city is "the" city of 
Literature. Controversially, the arts council has ploughed millions into 
converting a city Georgian building into The New Writers Centre. Yet, at the 
core of this venture, are all the same old names from at least ten years 
back - from the UEA and art school. Here are the factories of this 
post-post-modernism that so many buy into - because it's all about climbing 
the slippery pole. With such a connected edifice it was always impossible to 
create an opposite pole of attraction. The fact that you can't get a 
cigarette paper between Labour, Tories and Lib-Dems means, in my view, only 
social change will bring forth cultural change - though, that seems like a 
cop out (waiting, always waiting)!

I know there is growing interest in the magazine scene of the 1970s. Yes, it 
wasn't all brilliant but it was an exciting explosion that may prompt 
something in this decade. If not, I'll be with the Grace Petries, not the 
still waters of the Tempest.

All best wishes, Rupert

-----Original Message----- 
From: Tim Allen
Sent: Sunday, October 05, 2014 4:49 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Kate Tempest etc

Yes Phil Jupitus, and Mark Lamarr - and you are probably right about DP's 
involvement.

If I can just add another smidgen on this. There are some people who 
genuinely think that anything that 'helps' to make poetry more popular must 
be a good thing, hence their support and backing to things like performance 
poetry etc. In my experience these people, though well educated and 
generally up-to-date on arty issues, tend to know very little about modern 
poetry, beyond what they get from the broadsheets and browsing the 
occasional Poetry Review. They have no negative issue with performance 
poetry or slams because they don't really have any interest in it - all they 
see is an exciting performer and a pleased and clapping audience, therefore 
it must be to the good. They remain quite ignorant of what is going on in it 
so have no conception of why anyone might have a problem with it. Any 
negative view can just be dismissed as intellectual sneering.

I think I wrote in Terrible Work once something convoluted about for every 
person performance poetry wins over to poetry it ensures that another two 
will never go beyond its own limits. Not sure about the maths there but I 
think I know what I meant.

Cheers

Tim

On 5 Oct 2014, at 15:52, Tony Frazer wrote:

> Tim:
>
> Actually, I don’t disagree with you.
>
> I’ve enjoyed some of this stuff live; on the page it’s almost always 
> inert, if not downright embarrassing. I’m amused that perf. poets want to 
> get into print, when they’ve usually sneered at "page poets”. They belong 
> on video or CD, in my view, and a lot of the material is like bad 
> stand-up. (And didn’t Phil Jupitus start out as a perf. poet?) My main 
> beef is not with Ms Tempest writing and performing this stuff — it’s a 
> free country — but rather the cultural gatekeepers leaping on a bandwagon 
> and trying to appear hip. I would guess that Don Paterson’s involvement 
> was mandated by someone higher up the food chain at that publisher — with 
> DP no doubt gnashing teeth as he negotiated the contact. While I dislike 
> most of DP’s own poetry he is most definitely not an idiot, even if I 
> disagree with him on a large number of things poetic.
>
> I live in a city where 90% of the poetry presented is stuff like this, and 
> the lone contrarian event lost its funding last year. Thankfully Bath is a 
> short distance away, with some contrasting work.
>
> Tony
>
>
> On 5 Oct 2014, at 15:42, Tim Allen 
> <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
>> Hi Tony,
>>
>> If I can just use this to add a smidgin - there are some good performance 
>> poets out there but they are heavily outnumbered by the awful ones. I 
>> tend to judge a performance poem on its 'performance', not on how it 
>> might come across when printed - the printed versions are scores, but 
>> once the poet or his/her supporters start to champion the text itself 
>> then we're in trouble. There are poems which just don't work on the page 
>> but can come across really well in performance where the internal 
>> deficiencies   are hidden and become irrelevant - but this can also 
>> happen with normal page poets of course.
>>
>> One of the most common performance poetry tendencies these days is the 
>> presentation of a hyperbolic narrative concerned with some personal 
>> experience or observation. The personal experiences and/or observation 
>> are always something that the audience will immediately recognise, like 
>> having a bad cold or being stared at on a bus etc. The 'subject' is then 
>> given this increasingly manic OTT treatment as though it is something 
>> that is really really important. The energy produced by the rhythm and 
>> delivery is interpreted by the audience (desperately willing 
>> entertainment upon themselves) as being the result of a genuine emotion. 
>> The fact that it is all an empty drama doesn't matter - the rules of the 
>> game, the values expected, have been maintained.
>>
>> Cheers
>>
>> Tim
>>
>> On 4 Oct 2014, at 20:23, Tony Frazer wrote:
>>
>>> by the way here’s the link to the poem
>>>
>>> http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/oct/04/saturday-poem-on-clapton-pond-at-dawn-kate-tempest
>>>
>>>
>>> Tony