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> > Thanks for those impassioned words. It's led me to consider my "vocation", > and that's always a good thing. But I still want to feed my kids and shop at > Tesco's. > > best > > C > Dear Chris, poetry was still considered a kind of sublime escape from history and politics sometime, in the years before the second world war - therefore, a refuge from the miserable stage represented by the world: in Italy this was as true as the zealous attitude of the poets-servants of the Fascist regime. Paradoxically, war decided a break with that paralyzed situation since the very urgency of it solicited the search of new, uncomfortable forms. The major point was to scorn literary society, to believe that things of the social theatre of human relations are more important than art, that poetry has a limited field of action, therefore strict limits and that the value of a man is rather established - as the Italian Marxist poet Fortini used to say - "by the way he asks a waiter, (any waiter ) for a glass of water." than from the way he composes verse. Of course at the beginning of the poetic experience, writers are inclined to experience writing as a kind of noble bravado. In the light of such inauthentic scenario , some extremist poets feel the final solution is that of Rimbaud, i.e. to stop writing. We should always quest in the first instance - and certainly before questions connected with money and copyrights, the difficult relation of the poets-intellectual with the mechanism of the political economical power: the pestilence. But why one keeps writing: to gratify people's needs? our own? Certainly not our pockets, since poetry has always been (everywhere, I guess ) the poorer of all arts. You want to become extraordinarily rich ? Then write drama....(I was prepared to marry a dramatist,if I did not found a surgeon, as I was hoping...(joking! actually, not joking). Poets are seen shopping at Tesco (myself, in the first instance), some, as Tom Paulin, have been caught while buying an expensive great coats at Allders (again, he earns his living as a senior lecturer), has have shopped at Tesco by mean of royalties (unless he is a Nobel Price or starts doing all sort of correlated activities: translations, literary criticism, conference, teaching, activities these that imply a life commitment on all different fronts (these kind of poets have as their principal activity that of being teachers or lecturers). They might get tokens from this or that poetry reading (a humble cheque varying from 70 to 150 pounds, according to the reputation). But if one has a numerous family, or children attending UK universities, where the parents are required now to pay the University fees,a accommodation and living expenses, that is certainly not enough. Poetry (not the business of writing novels, as I said in the previous post) doesn't make anybody rich. But is fragile enough as to be effected by the rule of the publishing market. To be honest, whenever on the behalf of my various publishers, I contacted distributors like Faber and Faber to check how much they charged for the rights of Heaney or Hughes - I always found out with great surprise that - a part from the game powers of allocating the rights - the sum requested was really equivalent to a pack of peanuts. Nor in my knowledge, my publisher earned from the selling of the book in translation enough money as to go for a boat ride over the canal. So, all this business must be elsewhere than in the poetic literary scene. In scientific medical geographical academical texts, maybe? A month or two ago I saw Jamie at Blackwell going down the stairs to the ground floor> He said he was looking for the scientific section and went to the shells displaying books of geography , atlas, maps. I though he had finally decided to pass to travel writing and become rich . But no, he was merely looking for some references for his beautifully arranged geographical poems... So, in my experience, I would say that poets tend to stay poets (that's why they become poets) and are rich mainly in spirit (with few exceptions of those who have in their backgrounds or win a Nobel).... As a poet myself, I distrust inspiration and enjoy a passion for the negative aspect of poetry. How could I indulge in paradisiacal thoughts of real fame and money? By the way, the most beautiful verse in Italian is to be considered Saint Francis's, Il cantico delle creature. No thriumpalism. Humbleness.