I know what you mean about poetic fame being the weakest form of celebrity
Jeff. I have been watching What Katie Did Next on ITV2, which follows the
author, ex-glamor model Jordan, mum of three and a genuine Celebrity, around
the place as the UK paparazi follow her every move. The disconnect between
how she comes across on TV and what the papers say about her, illustrates
how deldued we all are when making crass assumptions about others.
Here's a woman who has made millions out of nothing more than people being
interested in the way she looks and what she has to say, and she doesn't
even write poetry, yet all these faux intellectual female commentators make
a living opining in the rags why she is this that or the other, when the
reality is she is just a mum who clearly loves her kids and the one with
real intellectual savvy because she sees the storm around her for exactly
what it is. Lots of other people talking shit about her and getting outraged
because she does not fit the template of how people should behave in their
world views.
Poetry, when you look at current theoretical physics which makes our
technological reality, is a poor see through relation and it would be
interesting to actually tot up how many poets' books actually stand on their
own two feet without subsidy. Katie Price sells millions of books with only
fluff between the covers, and yet the artie intellectual crowd who'd claim
her cultural value when set against their own writings, don't make a bean.
I actualy think we take ourselves far too seriously in the UK. The whole
poetry world is rigged, the majority of people considered to be at the top,
are nearly all subsidised on one form or another and so when people talk
about poetry and claim this poem or that one as more worthy a specimen than
another, and then the award crews and prize givers all ooh and ah over such
a thing or not, it's all just exactly what you say, subsidized cliques who
are irrelevant in the wider culture. Once we accept we have no value and
don't take ourselves so seriously, maybe we'd become a bit more important. I
dunno.
~
I love you Judy, you know that don't you?
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