I don’t see the topic, Sean, as in the least bit taboo, and your Irish poet’s blunt witticism isn’t in my experience at all rare or surprising. I’m wondering who are these people you mention who dishonestly ‘plead poverty’. Plead in relation to what? And to what it end? Are they pleading poverty as an excuse for teaching something as ignominious as creative writing, or for not paying for their round? None of this makes sense to me.

   It may be true, as you say, that ‘many who are not “star names” are doing well in economic terms’, but I don’t see why that in itself should be cause for complaint or recrimination. It might even be an encouraging sign of public interest in the art.

   Grand as it is, David’s quote from the Mallarmean Jo Gargery avoids actually looking at the economics he said needed to be considered. It might help, then, to put together some figures.

  In Britain (and I can’t imagine that’s much different in Ireland or the US or...anywhere – more likely in most places somewhat worse), very few poets will receive more than £2000 or its equivalent for a book of poems, even fewer will subsequently earn more from the book than a further £1000 from royalties. (I’m guessing the average advance is more like £500).

  The poems included could have received payment from magazines, unlikely to add up to much more than another £1000-£1,500.

Let’s say the book takes 3-4 years to complete, then we’re looking at about £1,000-£2000 p.a. For the majority considerably less.

  Readings can be well paid, so maybe another £1-2,000 p.a. could be earned that way.

   Then for poets doing comparatively well (obviously I only mean in economic terms), their earnings would average between £1-4,000 a year. A damn sight better than zilch, but not really enough to live on.

Prizes and commissions could indeed make a difference to this picture and do in the case of quite a few poets, but not such a big difference if you consider their earnings across several years.

 

  There may be some ten or so poets who earn considerably more. My probably uninformed guess is half a dozen. They have my congratulations for managing something so unlikely and against the odds. One doesn’t have to admire their work, but why resent them?

 

Reviewing and translating are generally ill-paid, so – as with poetry – it would be very tough trying to earn a living that way.

(As an example, the prose work I’ve been translating for the last year could have earned, if I were less painfully slow, at best something like £10 an hour. As it is I reckon it’s more like £3-4 an hour. For translating poetry usually much less, though in my experience it’s a lot more fun.)

 

Which leaves:  administrative work with festivals and venues (I know nothing about this), the rare job of editing, TV and radio work (likewise rare), and finally teaching (by far the most popular option) – from all of which a good living, I’m sure, could be earned, or pieced together.

 

I said it was an arid topic, but I offer these rough – but to the best of my knowledge indicative – figures to dispel any notion that the topic is taboo or that, for the most part, poets are secretly raking in red barrow loads of cash. As I’ve also said, I don’t at all mind poets being paid for what they do, so I give the figures in a spirit of neutrality. If anyone has a more accurate or better informed overview of the economics of the poetry world, I’d gladly adjust my estimates.

 

  I have my own reservations, which I’ve already expressed on this list, about the proliferation of creative writing courses, but I don’t see them necessarily as evidence of any nefarious or predatory practices, as David and Pierre seem to. Just because I think X who teaches at the University of Z a hopeless poet, and doubt whether any students will learn anything useful from him, I wouldn’t therefore want to abolish the whole institution.

 

If you avoid speaking about the finances you may be accused of creating a taboo. If you actually do speak openly about them, you’re likely to be called venal and capitalistic. Here I expect to be accused of both. Simultaneously.

 

To return to the Irish poet turned novelist: no-one seems to resent novelists receiving a hefty five figure advance. Why on earth do the far smaller earnings of some poets, whatever their quality, cause such resentment?

 

Jamie