"Don't ask me what I mean" by Clare Brown and Don Paterson (eds) (Picador, 2003)

It's a book of statements by poets about poetry. I've added the below quotes and more to my Literary Quotes page

• "the concept of poetry ... as self expression has always repelled me" (John Heath-Stubbs)
• "a poet goes so deeply inside himself to write a poem that he ceases to be himself at all" (P.J. Kavanagh)
• "The sestina strikes me as the poetic equivalent of an instrument for removing Beluga caviar from horses' hooves - bizarrely impressive, but finally useless" (Craig Raine)
• "Is God dead? The very mention of his name and of prayer in a poem now arouses the derision of jobbing reviewers. Generally speaking, contemporary English poetry is cheap and shallow as a result", (R.S. Thomas)
• "I can foresee a time when poetry as we have known it will, like the Marxist state, wither away, and only poets be left", (Peter Whigam)
• "In keeping with fashion rather than strict honesty, I put the poems to do with unhappiness and searching at the end of the book, but the wheel has gone round often since then and most people read slim volumes backwards", (Hugo Williams)
• "one cannot help remembering how few poets have improved much after forty if indeed they didn't get a lot worse", (Hugo Williams)
• "Listening to English writers talking about surrealism is about as fruitful as listening to Frenchmen discussing a cricket match", (John Hartley Williams)
• "Pity for the poets who have no subject save themselves", (Christopher Logue)

Fleeting gone

The link I had to a poem in Fleeting has gone dead, so I'll reprint it here -

The Gallery Affair Then I see her, the girl of my crutched dreams - Mona Lisa smoking a pipe that's not a pipe, sipping absinthe from a fur-lined cup that tickles her moustache. We miss the train that leaves the fireplace, but anyway it's raining businessmen so we stay in, smooch to the Broadway Boogie Woogie, sleeping in this tent with en-suite Mutt urinal. We've learnt our lessons. Abstraction came too easy for Brancusi, the universe already constipated with objects. He fed his 2 white dogs lettuce floating in milk. Schiele was more realistic - he couldn't afford the paint, he said, when the judge who burnt his work in public asked why he chose models with amputated feet. Our millennium opened late for staff training. By the time we wake to Turner's blazing sunrise, it's all on video, our taut bodies reviewed as allusive symbols of when beauty was freer than porn, though the cafe's a rip-off and the Impressionists' cheap pigments are fading in the light, irreplaceable as our love, the frame and signed canvas statements in themselves.

Losing yourself

Sometimes a person retreats to a cave or a remote croft to find themselves, worried that others might influence them, that their true self will be diluted.

Some writers are rather like that, not interacting with others. If their writing's good enough for them that's all that matters. Some become famous, albeit belatedly - Emily Dickinson for example, or to a lesser extent, Hopkins. But most writers like the company of other writers, thinking that it helps their writing. Many join their local writer's groups. Some reach out further, participating in the big world of literature, thinking that the advantages of joining a local group are magnified by interacting with more people. Maybe so, but the risks are greater too - writers risk being driven by market forces and social pressure, losing their authenticity by doing anything to be published, selling themselves out.

I'm one of those people involved with bigger groups. I look upon new styles not as a betrayal of Self but as a way of exploring new aspects of it. I think some compromise is inevitable - friendships depend on it, so why not the writer-reader relationship? But if you're worried about authenticity, here are some tips on how to survive out there without selling your soul too much.

• Find out about the magazines which accept work just like yours. There are magazines specialising in "Gothic Seaside", "Funfairs", "Angels", light verse, etc.
• Don't agonise about which magazine to send a piece to. Send it to a dozen magazines at once - most little literary magazines accept (even encourage) simultaneous submissions nowadays. Mix ambitious submissions with easier, confidence-building ones. Keep lots of submissions in the post - 20 or so. If you're a novelist, write Flash too.
• Let the piece find its own level - start by sending to the New Yorker by all means, but be prepared to send it to smaller and smaller magazines if it's repeatedly rejected.
• Be prepared to re-style your pieces to suit the market or editor (just as you wear appropriate clothes to different social events). If experienced editors make suggestions, listen to them. Don't let your ego get in the way. Try different styles: a chameleon has just as authentic a Self as a toad has - Self is more than skin deep.
• Don't forget that something of value to you - a piece where you feel you've expressed your feelings clearer than ever before, perhaps - may be of no interest to those who don't know you. Though novelty for its own sake isn't likely to fool people for long, neither is submitting work too similar to what others send in. Alexander Pope's "What oft was thought, but ne'er so well expressed" still applies, but many more thoughts have been well expressed since his day, so you need to read widely, not just write.

AI

Most guidelines for literary magazines and competitions include mention of AI nowadays. It's a rather loose term (I've seen it used for computer-assisted tasks that involve OuLiPo procedures, anagram generation, or randomness) but usually people have a chatgtp-like facility in mind, the computer producing the poem.

The process can be more collaborative than that though, the human keeping control. I've heard a leading mathematician say recently that he uses chatgtp to bounce ideas off of, like chatting to someone over coffee. I use Google in rather the same way, to see what happens if (say) I search for "sheep and chess".

"AI Literary Review" is a new home for such work - "a journal of new poetry, created by humans, utilising artificial intelligence". The poets describe the process that led to their poem. See Issue 1 (Sam Riviere, Harry Man, etc).

"So Tim, here's my first question - What actually is poetry?"

Well, Poetry is as various as Music - both in style (Bach, Bebop, Bacharach, Bantu) and purpose (lullabies, soundtracks, hymns, songalongs, propaganda, etc). If two people say they like music, one might be into Garage and the other Plainsong. Two poetry enthusiasts might also have little in common.

In music, fusions are quite possible (Jazz-rock etc). I think that in poetry it's harder to see the joins when styles and purposes are mixed, and switches are more common - The Waste Land's polyphony (with some fragments a word or line long) is hard to do in music.

Music fans make no apology for specialising - if they like brass bands they choose their music friends accordingly - but sometimes I feel that poets who don't understand/like each other's work feel they should stick together anyway to show solidarity against the unbelieving masses. I think some fragmentation of the poetry world is inevitable. I know of poets who say that Larkin's not a poet. I've heard others say that Prynne isn't. And there's the stage/page split - not everybody thinks that Hollie McNish's pieces work off the page. There's Flarf, Doggerel and Found Poetry.

And then there's the march of time - I think some UK pieces that were considered poetry in the 1990s are Flash now. I'm reclassifying some of mine that I wrote back then. And there's the international perspective - there's a tendency in certain periods/countries to view "bad" (or rude, or unpatriotic) poetry as non-poetry.

E-mail and social media has increased the amount and speed of interaction between poets. In the old days a fashion might dominate a nation for years. Nowadays the turnover is so fast that no single style has time to take root - less fashionable styles are frequently re-integrated. This could lead to homogenisation. Fortunately, the improved communication also gives people a chance to find like-minded people, so sustainable niches are more common now, ensuring variety.

Looking back, it's tempting to label poetry eras - "The Movement", etc - but of course many styles of poetry were present in those eras. Nowadays these unfashionable styles remain more visible than before.

So my answer to the original question is the standard one - it depends who you ask, when, and why. Some texts have been considered poetry by many people for a long time. Among those people are academics who influence (at least nationally) what we categorize as poetry. More than ever though, we need to carefully think about what definitions are for.

Acumen 110

The poetry magazine Acumen continues confidently beyond its centenary issue, keeping its combination of poetry, translations, articles (this time about William Carlos Williams, "Jazz & Poetry" etc) and reviews. There are 120 packed pages (poems by different poets sometimes share a page). Here are a few snippets from the more "mainstream" pieces -

• a plane aiming blind for Leeds,/ its noselight a needle threading clouds/ like worn-out sheets in need of mending (Nancy Mattson)
• [About a kite] - You held it up like a placard,/ while I attached the string,// unreeling it walking backwards,// as if I were laying a fuse (Stephen Claughton)
• the wind toys with leaves like loose/ change in the pocket of the sky (Kathryn Bevis)
• [About an Emperor penguin's egg] - When I'm gone and the shell/ of our marriage cracks, believe that what/ we held between us all this time will break/ out live and singing (Kathryn Bevis)
• warm right arm/ of your scarlet sunglasses/ hooked// into the plunging V-neck of your shirt (Martyn Crucefix)
• to seek truth rather than being right (Gabriel Moreno)

10th Sep 2024, Devereux Pub, London

I got there early, had a chat with Matthew Stewart and Mat Riches while they were fueling up ready for their readings, then left before the start! Long story, but at least I got there. Hope they had a good evening.

Later Matthew wrote that the reading was one of 5 done in 6 days, covering over 1,100 miles. 26 books sold. Taylor Swift doesn't have to worry about competition yet.