Excuse the nit-picking but I think Young was the only one of these 'promoted as a pop-star'. It was a record label gave him the reputed million advance. Perhaps they rued the whole campaign.
Cooper-Clarke often appeared with Punk bands, was and still is something of a cult figure, and didn't need promoting.
Reed often writes about pop-stars but, as far as I know, has never been promoted as such.
Yevtushenko was a pop phenomenon used to filling, we kept hearing, stadiums in Russia (and large halls in the West). I recall one such reading in which he told the audience that Kipling was a great and under-rated poet, and then he declaimed the whole of 'Boots' stamping his feet in time. Well, Eliot valued Kipling's poems too, but I prefer Nancy Sinatra's 'These boots are made for walking...'
Good to hear of Saarikoski of whom I knew nothing.
Jamie
> On 14 Oct 2015, at 09:39, [log in to unmask] <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> Ah, Murray Lachlan Young, yes the young Waterstone's was full of him. He was one of those poets who was promoted as a pop-star, same as was done with John Cooper-Clarke and Jeremy Reed.
>
> I'm a Reed fan, but not as much as I'm a Yevtushenko fan.
>
> And even more so, Saarikoski.
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