Lawrence is right that my “It always amuses me…” is a dodgy introduction,
often used to appeal to some prejudice that the writer has, and which the
reader is presumed to share unless s/he protests; a cajoling “You don’t need
to look at the facts, just sign this form.”
It was partly provocative; certainly it wasn’t clear enough about *what
amuses me. I would be a fool if I thought that poems are rubbish when they
appear with staples. Poetry produced like this I like, dislike, bin or leave
for later – depending on the poetry.
I might scorn pamphlets if I equated commercial with poetic success. I
don’t. My point was about non-commercial poetry: *why has someone bothered
to put that mark at the end? As Richard wrote, copyright in Britain is
automatic; that (c) is redundant. Lawrence wrote “It would seem perfectly
reasonable to me to suppose that someone might steal my work given *some of
what is published”. If publishers stole what was good rather than what sold
then this would be a defense. But publishers are *not going to steal from my
or your poetry, or even from the poetry of the new NewGen. They have poetry
submissions (and ex-OUP-listers) coming out of their ears; even the most
popular poetry doesn’t sell much in commercial terms: they don’t have a
motive.
If any poet lived by their poetry then that (c) would be a guarantee that
he/she would be able to buy bread. Copyright as I see it has is a
practicality, nothing to do with “artistic rights”. But *no one today lives
by the sales of their poetry, pamphlet or book! If this is so, why worry
about copyright? If someone reprints my work that means my work is getting
read. Why worry about the £5 they pay or don’t pay me as I can’t live on?
That I am paid such a £5 would be a matter of civility, not copyright.
If there were a chance (to use someone else’s example) that Spielburg would
make anyone’s poems into a movie that would be different. But there is no
such chance. Nor will a major publisher rip someone off. Who is that (c)
meant to scare off???
I suppose I am agreeing with many of Alaric’s propositions. Copyright is a
commercial invention, designed to make sure that when a publication makes a
lot of money some of it goes to the author. Poetry, especially the poetry
this list is concerned with, makes a negligible amount of money: it is,
commercially, a failure. If this is the case, why not take advantage of the
state of affairs rather than cling to the vestiges of commerciality? I can’t
(and see no need to) change the law; but I can participate in a community
that willfully neglects copyright.
Would this have value? That if one of us saw a poem s/he liked it could be
unfurtivly distributed to other interested people? This was the principle of
MS anthologies. Would any of us suffer from the re-start of Miscellanies,
except in gaining more readers?
Isn’t the power of an individual – or, worse, “the estate of late lamented
H. Higgs” – to deny the right to quote poems in a study or biography a
hindrance to thought and discussion? Isn’t poetry made of these two
freedoms?
Best,
James
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