Thanks David,
I too find poetry economically non-viable. I guess I might have made about
£250 (two hundred and fifty pounds sterling) from 25 years of writing
poetry - i might add about another one thousand pounds from readings and
then get into more difficult territories such as money from performing that
is definitely poetry-related or language-based. Then there're bits of
teaching / lecturing i've done which are informed by my practice as a poet
and so forth. It begins to add up and i don't want to separate any one bit
out and say that's where the poetry is no longer an active agent.
Of course i recognise the workings of nepotistic and corrupt and bankrupt
aesthetics in the art world and the workings of multi-national corporations
in the music industry. Personally i won't have a recording in the house -
nor a machine to play them on. I don't think that there is any such thing
as 'clean' money. We all comply with money, it's how it's used and the
mechanisms through which such usage is put into effect that can begin to
make differences to such vicious cycles of exploitation and manipulation
surely (yes, i'm being very broad and sweeping here - that's not a
considered economic policy). Yes, a CD by Soviet France is an index of a CD
by Madonna. You might even have books by William Blake that you didn't make
yourself. And if i'm really in the saddle, why don't i spit out the old
line that making space for others to be creative in is creative work. I
don't personally resent the Literature Development Worker, although i know
that the arts carreer structures can place the practitioners at the bottom
of its topsy-turvy tree and that is always sickening. But part of the
historical reason for that happening is because of the attititudes that
artists have displayed towards issues of professionability.
Which leads on to the other aspects of what can appear to be bleating about
preserving a pure space for poetry that bother me greatly. One is that old
chestnut (not something i'm suggesting you've raised yet btw - but i'm
raising it) of the artist without responsibilities. That's one of the key
issues that we've been tinkering to discuss here recently in the concensus
/ context posts. This can all too easily become the romantic image of the
artist / poet, the romantic life of the outsider, the sanctified position
of the abject and so on. Those are cliches and conventions that i for one
want to unpack and display as 'in the way' of the work. So, I'm keen to
display the ability to respond (to paraphrase Duncan), to not set myself up
as a social pariah but act in more subtle manners, to take the work
seriously and expect respect at least in return from those who have the
romantic image of the artist etched onto their responses by a society which
is overkeen on defining a proper job in such reductive terms as to render
arts practitioners either no-hopers or advertising agencies. All poetry
partakes in systems of value exchange (unless it never sees the light of
day). Then make such engagements a consious part of the dialectic in the
writing.
Bob Cobbing, whose 79th birthday Lawrence Upton celebrated last week, has
been living as a poet / publisher for over 30 years. Now when one considers
his work, that's a signal achievement. He's not exactly rolling in it, but
his work and his life are intertwined beyond separation. I, personally,
feel proud to salute that. Yet, obviously for some he's copped out, he's
playing the game. What happened?
love and love
cris
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