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One thing you might want to factor into the discussion is that many prizes are done by committee, which is to say the ultimate winner is decided by compromise. There is an assumption that the judges were all wildly in agreement in their selection because of the publicly issued statement about the winner.  But that agreement is after the fact. More often it’s three, or however many, judges with different tastes and allegiances, and at the end of the day those differences must be resolved or no one gets to go home. My guess is that is often why the winners’ work is acceptable rather than brilliant. In an earlier part of the process there is often a narrowing down of the list, which is done by several people who are not the final judges, thereby increasing the tilt towards acceptability.

As pointed out earlier: they are not acts of literary criticism.

And like most funding for the arts, they partial, not comprehensive. 

I don’t particularly approve of these conditions, but I do realize their pervasiveness and how monumentally difficult the task would be to change them.








______________________________

QS: Let’s return to poetics.
JR: When did we leave?

—From the conversation between Quinta Slef and Joan Retallack, The Poethical Wager





On Jan 26, 2018, at 8:48 AM, Jamie McKendrick <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

Tim, I’m removing the sock for your ‘to conform to mainstream expectations’ remark, as it qualifies for my ‘nonsensical’ criteria for sock-removal. I’m sure you could find numerous writers who you’d place in that category that feel at least as passionately averse to the phenomenon as you do. Watts herself I’m sure you’d place there and it’s her who’s speaking out about it.
   It may seem a small point but as I mentioned on the other parallel thread it’s not the T.S.Eliot prize but the Ted Hughes Prize which I believe was created to give a bit of profile to mixed media poetry. People are still entitled to question it whatever prize it wins.
Jamie
 
From: [log in to unmask]" href="mailto:[log in to unmask]" class="">Tim Allen
Sent: Friday, January 26, 2018 4:22 PM
To: [log in to unmask]" href="mailto:[log in to unmask]" class="">[log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Rebecca Watts
 
How about this Michael - over the past few years I have heard/witnessed many different young poets, and among them a number whose work could be slotted into the confessional/therapeutic/oral performance bag. And among them I have heard poetry that is far far better than what I've read of McNish, yet these are relatively unknowns. So what is going on? What is it about McNish that makes her special? The only thing I can think of is that she is just about good enough in one way (to conform to mainstream expectations) while the nature of her work can simultaneously be presented as current etc.
 
My liking for adventurous poetry that pushes and provokes is not limited to the avants, it also covers the raw and direct when that raw and direct manages to avoid the easy options of cliche and crowd pleasing rubbish, and when it is real, and not just a clone of the real (I can go for clones of the real in a different type of poetry but not this one - in this one the real has got to be real, and it's got to work). There's quite a bit of it around at the moment and yes, Melissa Lee-Houghton is definitely one of the most successful, and I mean that positively. So for me it's not just a case of McNish or whoever writing something that is completely alien to my receptors or taste, because it's not - I just think it's very average poetry that borders on the poor, so if this stuff happens to win the Eliot etc then I think people are right to question it.
 
The thing about the prizes is weird. I could say that I don't give a fig (as you expressed) or that because of this example I suddenly find myself giving a fig. Go figure...
 
Cheers
 
Tim
     
On 25 Jan 2018, at 20:08, [log in to unmask] wrote:

I've quickly read some Melissa Lee-Houghton poems and yes, I think they too could exemplify what I mean.