That business recently emanating from a piece by Rebecca Watts in PN Review which (being a scrap) even reached the larger media… A complaint about very young or novice poets having rewards and honour heaped on them as soon as they’ve written a word and promoted with remarkable speed to top positions in the poetry structure… and accused of being sub-intellectual, craftless, exhibitionist etc. especially Hollie McNish (not so young)….
Well, when you look further into it there are quite a lot of them, because it has become a fixed structure, and the “best” teenage poets have to be found, every year, and in fact they are not all the same and do not all subscribe to the same values. Laura Potts would probably be classed as one of these, first glorified when she was 18 a few years ago, impressive list of honours and appointments... But when you get to the poetry itself, it turns out not to be what you would expect it to be.
and plans to add more soon.
PR