This seems to be created quite a stir in "the poetry world" (now “split”!):
Apologies if this link has already been posted.
Paterson says,
“If you’ve ever seen Hollie perform, the suggestion that she doesn’t know exactly what she’s doing is pretty funny. You don’t have to like what people do, but I think you measure it against its own ambitions.
but this seems a bit off the mark, as Watts wasn’t responding to the work in performance, but in book form — having been asked to review it.
Hi Tristan, I guess I'm pretty indifferent on the topic of awards. The governing bodies of these things can award who they like for all I care. I can't take them seriously as acts of literary criticism. Tthe motivations behind individual awards often have less to do with the recipient than with preserving and cultivating the award's own reputation for relevance, contemporaneity, capacity to surprise, etc, as well as courting controversy in the interests of generating debate (but not out of genuine desire to open up debate, just to increase the award's own media profile). The game is to get us, the members of the public, arguing about whether the current recipient "deserved" the award or not. Why indulge them, why play that media game?
