1Love Poetry: February 2012

I haven�t written about the Poetry Society since its AGM in September voted in a new board. There hasn�t been much to discuss except gossip, some of which was well-founded. No doubt a lot of hard work was going on in the background. Roger McGough was chosen as president, which seemed a thoroughly positive move.

Enough to say that the new board�s declaration, just before Christmas, about looking forward to continuing work with both the director, Judith Palmer, and the editor of Poetry Review, Fiona Sampson, seemed unrealistic in the face of what looked to outsiders like a stalemate, with Sampson working from home. However the Arts Council must have been satisfied with the new board�s governance - early this year it released the funding withheld since last summer.

Two of the board�s members, Polly Clark and Edward Mackay, weren�t happy, and resigned in December. The first PoSoc members/voters heard of this was when Clark announced it on her blog in February, because PoSoc hadn�t. Two new members have now been co-opted: Neil Reeder and Jon Sayers, who were candidates in the election at the AGM. The board needs a communications strategy - lack of openness was one of the problems last summer.

The trigger for writing this now is Fiona Sampson�s resignation from Poetry Review a few days ago. This appears to have come about suddenly since PoSoc are going to appoint a guest editor for the summer issue, presumably to fill the gap while they are hiring. [Update, 29 Feb: guest editor is George Szirtes.]

There�s been discussion on Facebook about the editorship (by people who know a lot more about editing poetry magazines than I do). But I think common sense is sufficient qualification to talk about most aspects, so I�m going to.

Should PR continue to be edited by just one person? I�d answer that with a resounding No. For two main reasons. First, the quality and nature of the magazine. Multiple editors should bring editorial breadth and minimise bias; also reduce perceptions of bias. (The fact that this didn�t happen with Potts & Herd doesn�t mean it�s not possible.) It�s OK, in fact expected, for any other poetry magazine to be biased; but the national one�s different. There�s so much variety in contemporary poetry, UK and international, to represent. PR should also keep its readers up to date with the thriving UK poetry scene, especially small presses - addressing the bias in major prizes and mainstream literary media. And I�d love it if PR commissioned a few good, accessible pieces on poetics, a subject PN Review does better.

Second, efficiency. No-one can deal sensibly with 60,000 poems a year and the burden of expectations of a wide-ranging membership. All poetry editors must have a masochistic streak, but to expect one person to take on all that is madness.

There�s no doubt that whatever the difficulties in her editorship, Sampson produced an interesting magazine with an international perspective, and brought some good new poets to light. I wonder how she managed this while reading every poem submitted, which apparently she did.

It�s no coincidence that the most efficient magazine I know, and one of the nicest, Smiths Knoll, has two editors. Of course PR is a much bigger enterprise, but the principle�s the same. I once asked Michael Laskey how they manage to return people�s poems within a fortnight, and his answer had a lot to do with two people sharing the work: taking it in turns for the bulk of the reading, and then making final decisions together. In that situation, backlog-inducing events such as illness or holidays aren�t such a strain. And becoming misanthropic is perhaps less likely.

To prevent blandness or fallings-out, a duo / trio could take it in turns to lead for each issue. Another option, which I fancy, would be more like the Magma model: a panel of editorial consultants, from whom a couple of editors would be chosen for each issue. This model would also make diversity easier: gender, background, ethnicity, age, interests, taste.

The main snag with a plural editorship might be cost... Maybe PoSoc could move away from a salary model to paying per issue; and supplementing with volunteers. Maybe they should start an editorial training programme (The Rialto�s about to do something like that, with its new Arts Council funding). That might be one internship nobody would have ethical problems with. It would help with sifting the poems, which seems to me an entirely acceptable thing to do.

The editors will need not just the usual skills, but some softer qualities too. What�s known as interpersonal skills: for getting on with other Poetry Society staff, with whom they have to share resources, and with the Poetry World. Independence of mind, open-mindedness, and a love of poetry powerful enough to get them through their editorial term. (I nearly added sense of humour, but this was starting to read like a lonely hearts ad.)

There�s surely near-consensus on limiting the editors� term. People mention 3 or 5 years as a good span. It needs to be long enough for the editors to realise whatever their distinctive vision is. Changes in an editorial team/board could be staggered. Standing down may not be enforceable in law (though payment per issue might change that), but weight of opinion would probably be enough for most people.

These editors need to be thick-skinned enough to cope with serious pressure (according to the Guardian, Sampson had death threats!) but not so thick-skinned they�d get dictator syndrome. The latest example of this is in Senegal, whose president was responsible for a constitution allowing himself two terms only, but has now managed to arrange standing for a third. The BBC reported on Sunday:

A crowd at a polling station in the capital, Dakar, booed Mr Wade as he cast his vote. They could be heard shouting: �Get out, old man!�

What poetry editor would want to experience that?

The most-read piece in PN Review�s archive is an essay by Marjorie Perloff (vol 115, 1997) called �What We Don't Talk About When We Talk About Poetry�. Intrigued by the title, and not being a PNR subscriber, I read it in the Poetry Library last week. It�s about literary journalism: reviews of books of and about poetry. It didn�t feel out of date.

What we don�t talk about, according to Perloff, is the difficult stuff: the history, the theory, the context. Reviews tend to be amateur, poet-on-poet. She contrasts this with the expertise behind reviews of books about anthropology, say, or architecture. It�s a long and complex article; here are some things I thought were interesting, and still relevant, at least in the British mainstream of literary journalism.

Perloff, an American critic, quotes the French philosopher Pierre Bourdieu (from a 1983 essay):

Poetry, by virtue of its restricted audience� the consequent low profits, which make it the disinherited activity par excellence, and also its prestige, linked to the historical tradition initiated by the Romantics, is destined to charismatic legitimation.

Perloff says, of poetry reviews on both sides of the Atlantic: �The mandate - to say something telling and original about 5 or 10 unlike and generally unexceptional volumes of short personal lyrics, is not easy to fulfil.� Two things are missing: a sense of history and a sense of theory. Insufficient space to define the reviewer�s terms contributes to �haziness of vocabulary coupled with the need to make definitive judgements�. The lack of signposts means we don�t know what poetry is or should be now, so don�t know what to look for. This is one reason why the main literary reviews concentrate on relatively few mainstream poets, many of whom are dead.

This comfort zone approach is still prevalent in 2012 - another article on Philip Larkin, anyone?

The phenomenon of one poet reviewing another comes, says Perloff, from the poetry workshop, which is �still dominated by a repressively Romantic concept of the poet as man speaking to man (or woman�), by the notion that poetry is emotion recollected in tranquillity, the poet speaking for all of us�.

The world of poetry is democratic �because, to put it bluntly, there isn�t enough at stake�. [I think Perloff would replace this democracy with a strictly modernist hierarchy - but one of the delights of 20^th and 21^st century poetry is its variety.] She samples some reviews, full of the kind of empathetic commentary and adjectival striving we still get in 2012.

It needn�t be so, says Perloff, because there is lots of good 20^th century writing on poetics, often by poets, from Ezra Pound and Gertrude Stein through 50�s manifestos for concrete poetry to Susan Howe. They may diverge widely but have this in common: �From Futurism and Dada on down, the international poetic impulse has been constructivist rather than expressionist: it is committed, in other words, to the basic theorem that poetry is the language art, the art in which the �what� cannot be separated from the �how�, in which the said only exists in the saying.� Also, there�s consensus in poetics (as opposed to literary journalism) that �poetic language is never simply unique, natural, and universal; it is the product, in large part, of particular social, historical and cultural formations. And these formations demand study.�

�um movimento� by Noigandres poet D�cio Pignatari, Brazil, 1956

Perloff takes hope from the increasing diversity of poetry publishing, and from the study and discussion of poetics at universities; and foresees (from 1997) the internet�s potential to disseminate all this. But she doesn�t seem to expect any of it will penetrate mainstream literary journalism. On the contrary: she thinks that the middle-class poetry public is a thing of the past, and that poetics is now �at least as specialised as is architectural discourse�.

15 years later, the poetry public is expanding, and has become more (though not sufficiently) diverse: workshops, open mics, small presses, competitions, blogs, online forums, magazines, MA�s. But mainstream literary journalism is much the same. I�ve just done a very quick online search of 3 mainstream British publications for articles that refer to Philip Larkin and J H Prynne. (I�ve no idea how many of these take either poet as their main subject; but the ratio of mentions does give an idea of these publications� frames of reference.)

Times Literary Supplement: PL 537 JHP 38

London Review of Books: PL 205 JHP 24

Guardian Books: PL 1,209 JHP 19

Does all this matter? I think it does. Reviews with a hinterland, at least, that includes history and theory tend to be more rigorous and interesting. And it would be very good to see a widening of subject matter: less Larkin, more Prynne, and more on books about poetics. Those of us who lack a background in poetics would learn from such changes, at all levels, from the basics of metre to theories about language. We might read more widely; that includes people who read mainstream literary publications for things other than poetry. The general discourse about poetry and poetics would improve.

Now for the reviews in poetry magazines. I enjoy reading many of these. The poetry world needs them. I enjoy writing about poetry, though get frustrated by my own lack of knowledge - I need stuff on poetics as much as anyone. I agree with everything in praise of poetry reviews that, by coincidence, Helena Nelson�s just posted on her blog. But I do think there�s too much easy, empathy crit, too much that�s blandly positive. And it would be great if things could be mixed up more, with brainy reviews, and reviews of difficult poetry, not just left to brainy magazines like PNR or Jacket, and to blogs etc like some of those listed on the right-hand side of this one.

The worlds of serious poetics and mainstream poetry discussion seem far too separate. Both mainstream literary reviews and poetry magazines could bring them closer. Let�s not be doomed to charismatic legitimation!

While writing this, I discovered that Perloff�s essay is on her website, here. I recommend �Strong Words�, edited by WN Herbert and Matthew Hollis, as a way in to 20^th century poetics: published by Bloodaxe, it�s a collection of writings by modern poets on modern poetry.

Last year, at the end of a public discussion of the TS Eliot Prize shortlist, just before the evening reading, there was a vote. Around a hundred articulate poetry readers chose their favourite. The winner was Robin Robertson�s The Wrecking Light. I�ve reviewed it in order to try to understand why I don�t like it, despite my admiration for Robertson�s skill.

This book is like a charm necklace, each hermetically sealed poem-charm containing something strange, metamorphosed. To wear these charms would not be safe: it could lead to anguish of the soul, and possibly to a very nasty end.

Anguish in The Wrecking Light is surely heartfelt, as in the final poem:

But you�re not here, now, to lead me back

to bed. None of you are. Look at the snow,

I said, to whoever might be near, I�m cold,

would you hold me. Hold me. Let me go.

In a 2010 interview on openlettersmonthly.com, Robin Robertson said, �It is very tiresome when readers identify me as the speaker in the poem, and extrapolate an autobiography�. But it�s hard not to feel that he is revealing something of himself each time, like the narrator of �Album�, the opening poem:

I am almost never there, in these

old photographs...

When you finally see me,

you�ll see me everywhere.

This applies whatever persona he takes on, even a geisha�s client, or, in �The Great Midwinter Sacrifice, Uppsala�, Adam of Bremen in 1075 witnessing a tree �decked simply with the dead�, animals and

�nine

that aren�t animals but hang there just the same,

black-faced, bletted, barely

recognisable as men.

I look down at the spongy grass

and my boots are soaking red.

As often, the horror is conveyed through simple language, with one unusual word, and extremely specific details.

The cumulative effect of Robertson�s imagining of metamorphosis, death and mutilation can make one feel exposed, almost flayed � a bit like walking round a room of Lucian Freud nudes. This feeling is heightened because his poems are so tightly controlled, as if to contain the emotion. It�s no surprise that in a 2008 Guardian interview he talked of poetry as �this machine that could produce such beautiful sounds�.

The intense tone of The Wrecking Light doesn�t vary much. Nor does the form: Robertson writes mostly iambic lines, of varying length, with great skill. He seems to have achieved line-break perfection. Here, a lake is under ice:

A low grumble, a lingering vibrato, creaks

that seem to echo back and forth for hours;

the lake is talking to itself. A loud

twang in the ice. Twitterings

in the railway lines

from a train about to arrive.

His nature descriptions tend to be highly wrought, but �Leaving St Kilda�, a journey round the islands and their place-names, is all the more evocative for being looser, long-lined:

on to... Sgeir Dhomnuill,

place of shags, who are drying their wings like a line

of blackened tree-stumps�.

The sense, however inaccurate, of self-exposure is also there in poems of mood such as �My Girls�, about waiting for children to fall asleep,

till they smooth into dreams and I can

slip these fingers free

and drift downstairs;

my face a blank,

hands full of deceit.

Later, his Forward Prize-winning poem �At Roane Head� has a nightmarish description of half-selkie boys which includes this: �Beautiful faces, I�m told,/ though blank as air.�

Robertson has cited David Jones as his greatest influence, with Yeats, Eliot, Lowell, Berryman, Bunting and Hill � an all-male canon. The control, and the tension, seem to have tightened further since his last collection, Swithering (which had more humour). It�s a characteristic he shares with Don Paterson, fellow Scottish poet and poetry editor, editor indeed of this book. Robertson has described The Wrecking Light as �the last in a costive quartet�.

The book has been much praised. But the control can become too overt, too predictable. I�d await Robin Robertson�s future collections with more excitement if I knew he could relax his grip, and move away from what he knows.

The Wrecking Light is published by Picador. See here for a recent article in the Daily Telegraph on the small (and male) world of top British poetry publishing.

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