in 2018 is no easy task Luke. It was a lot easier in decades past with serious experimentation undertaken by a huge amount of writers. It reminds me of the end of the book thinking when the future looked electronic but the book has survived. World Book Day is now an international event supported by big name publishers but in stating that smaller publishers may well benefit.
Point though is where will new forms of writing spring from and in real terms what can be done? We are creatures of habit Luke in what we read usually drawn to writers we revere sometimes going back to what we read when young. Often I regret that some fine poets publish no prose or very little or pen an autobiography. So we know very little about them apart from their poetry.
As my own generation are now OAPs or on their way to being seventy or more do they have any will to alter course? I see no rising young star on the horizon prepared to really move poetry on or indeed prose. By moving it on means uncharted waters regarding style plus presentation which is no easy task.
In many ways I feel sorry for editors who have to go with the tried and tested who have a medium to high readership. But where is the 2018 poet with a seriously new style of writing or indeed a poetic grouping? I recall a time when I used look to America for fresh work but I see little there now to make me dash to buy a book. Not that I can dash at all these days but in youth ran long distance.
Nor is there any really new mode of reading which is where many poets fall flat. An unwillingness to engage the audience is a weakness or perform with one’s listeners. Having hosted many readings the readers who could hold the audience were very very few. Knowing how to use a microphone or read aloud without one is in itself a skill.
Our culture now is very visual with little time to read or listen as one did in the radio or broadsheet eras. For a Louis Zukofsky or James Joyce or Basil Bunting to now emerge would be far far harder. I grew up with radio and it was the early sixties before we had a television station in Ireland. To bring in BBC or ITV required a very high aerial of a fair size mounted on one’s roof. Wales was the source and Pathe News was one’s global window in cinemas at that time.
Something new now would require a hard edge and maybe visuals in tandem? But perhaps to reinvent oneself by working in different styles might be the key? I recall Eric Mottram in an interview being excited that the late Paul Evans was writing a book of sonnets. Also in an interview Tom Raworth RIP said he would not rule out writing more formal poems. I expect ‘Visible Shivers’ & ‘Eternal Sections’ were what he meant?
So there are options Luke but to ‘Make It New’ is a tall order as Keston Sutherland’s work now makes clear. Sometimes in Keston’s work there are lovely lyrical melodic lines that I wish we would see expanded. ‘In your face’ is fine but it devalues Sutherland’s work. Will Rowe is another who can really be superb and while some knock his critical work I like it a lot.
Emily Critchley is a poet of great power and perception who in my humble view is a truly great poet. The rhythm & flair & measure in her lines are inspiring as are her range of interests. Yet are Keston & Emily & Will doing anything ‘new’?
In hope Luke
sc
Can post modernists "make it new"? Do they? I'm guessing it depends on how to define 'post modernism'. I suppose that I mean essentially that it's art (poetry?) iff it's said to be. Maybe another dim question.
Thanks for any reply,
Luke
