Luke Kennard wins The Forward Prize

Good to see Luke Kennard winning this year's Forward Poetry Prize for his excellent Notes on the Sonnets, first and foremost because it's a great collection and just the latest in a line of superb books that he's written, but also because he's a thoroughly nice chap. Good for Penned in the Margins, too, for publishing it – it's heartening to see a small press winning. 

Lots to enjoy (and to catch up with) in the rest of the shortlists, too, and well done to Caleb Femi for winning Best First Collection. 

Richard Thompson at 70

I'm not going to entirely rehash the old debate about whether song lyrics are poetry (yes, I'd say, although not the same sort of poetry you generally see on the page), but Richard Thompson is probably my favourite lyricist of all time. I hadn't realised that he was playing a 70th birthday gig at the Albert Hall, but there's an excellent interview about it and a host of other things here.

Boom time for poetry sales

Poetry sales are soaring, according to this piece in The Guardian, with both so-called 'Instagram poets' (I don't like the dismissiveness of that term) and everything from Homer to Heaney selling well.

I'm slightly confused by what it says about the boom being fuelled by a desire for clarity and a desire for more nuance. The latter sounds perfectly reasonable, but clarity isn't really what I'd go to poetry for. Nevertheless, it's encouraging, and if you want to keep the boom moving, then I'd be more than willing to sell you a signed copy of either of my Nine Arches Press collections, hydrodaktulopsychicharmonica and The Elephant Tests.

Conversations with Nick Cave

I am, I would have to say, a bit ambivalent about Nick Cave and his music. There was a time, around Let Love In, when I listened to him quite a bit. Looking it up, I've just noticed that not only was ex-Triffid Martyn Casey a member of the Bad Seeds by then, but Triffid head honcho David McComb also contributed backing vocals. But I can't say I've ever wholly gone along with the 'genius' tag he gets so often.

Still, that's irrelevant. This article in The Guardian is what I really wanted to talk about. Cave's responses to his fans feel genuine and generous, and I found this open letter to a grieving fan particularly moving.

I will have to go back and dip into Cave's back catalogue a bit, though. Given how prolific he's been, I've probably missed a lot.

Poetry in schools

Excellent piece here from Michael Rosen, on the teaching of poetry in schools, and how reducing it to a series of a yes/no answers not only does the poetry itself a great disservice, but teaches the children nothing and probably puts them off poetry for life. I was lucky, when I was at school, that we had English teachers who encouraged you to read a poem with an open mind – indeed, above all, who encouraged you just to read poems.

Is contemporary poetry in "a rotten state"?

Late to the party with this, but apparently novelist Rose Tremain thinks modern poetry is crap, while poet Robin Robertson finds himself sitting in the appalled middle ground, between the polar opposites of "light verse" or "incomprehensible".

Well, you can have fun arguing about whether or not they're right, but it's the way the subject is approached that bugs me. With Tremain, it's the "Let's dare to say it out loud". She sounds like one of those middle-aged men who 'dare' to be politically incorrect, but of course she's not saying anything daring at all, just using the platform afforded her by a national newspaper to trot out the same sort of thing Jeremy Paxman and Stephen Fry have done in the past. And of course, she doesn't mention any of the poets she does approve of, whether contemporary or from the past, or indeed any of the contemporary poets that she has read to form such an opinion. So, all things considered, a pretty pointless comment.

In Robertson's case, it's the implication that the "middle" in which he finds himself is somehow the squeezed, obscured, ignored part of the poetry world, rather than the largest sector, and the one that encompasses the larger presses and the bulk of the media coverage. It's dominated, of course, by middle-aged white men like Robertson writing largely mainstream poetry (and I speak as a middle-aged white man writing mainstream poetry). What's the problem with hearing some different voices?

Robin Robertson in The Guardian

It's not really any wonder that the world of poetry is small and polarised when the likes of Robin Robertson take every chance they get to trot out the same old grumpy-old-man bollocks moaning about 'Instagram poetry' and the avant-garde, is it?

Our Old Lady Of The Rain, by Jane Commane

I've only just noticed that The Guardian's Poem of the Week is Our Old Lady Of The Rain, by Jane Commane, from her debut collection Assembly Lines.

Jane, of course, runs Nine Arches Press and has worked absolutely tirelessly for its poets (including me) and many others over the years. It's a really fine debut, and I'll write about it at greater length in the near future, but you can get a taste of it in that Guardian feature.

As always at Poem of the Week, some of the comments are rather baffling, but at least it's people talking about poetry.

Poetry books of 2016

It's the time of end of year round-ups, and here, from The Guardian, is Kate Kellaway's choice of poetry books of 2016. I've only read a couple of them - the Denise Riley book and Alison Brackenbury's collection, and can recommend them both without reservation. Very different poets, but both equally deserving of a place in any end-of-year summary.

Cars and Girls

I've got a confession to make. I don't like Prefab Sprout. An awful lot of poets do, it seems, but I was never a fan. The only song of theirs that I do always enjoy hearing is Cars and Girls, which is a little odd in that it takes a bit of a pop at the (perceived) worldview of Bruce Springsteen, of whom I am a big fan. But still, I like it. Good tune, and good lyrics, which actually end by conceding that there's room for Springsteen's seemingly hopelessly romantic view of things too.

But this article, which I came across last week, makes some excellent points about Bruce's 'cars and girls' songs. Perhaps, in his first three albums, they were at times simplistic, but certainly from Darkness At The Edge Of Town onwards, they're anything but. Far from conferring freedom on the protagonist of the song, they often end up trapping them ever more hopelessly in their circumstances.

Anyway, it's got me listening to Springsteen's albums from the beginning again, and that's never a bad thing.

Hen Harrier poems

At the weekend, the Guardian ran this review of Colin Simms' Hen Harrier Poems, from Shearsman, to rather neatly coincide with Hen Harrier Day.

Any extra publicity that it gives to Hen Harrier Day, and to the shameful persecution of these birds by shooting interests, is very welcome, but it also shouldn't be allowed to obscure the brilliance of Simms' poetry. I recommend any one of the volumes of his work that Shearsman have been bringing out - his is a highly individual and rigorously exact nature poetry that is a world away from the stereotype of the genre that's sometimes decried.

Forward Prize nominations

The shortlists for this year's Forward Prizes have been released - particularly nice to see Peter Riley and Kim Moore in there, but they're interesting lists all round. I'll have to try to get hold of a few of the others to read over the summer, but in the meantime, I'd be interested to hear opinions on any of the nominated books and poems.

Sean O'Brien reviews Tony Williams

If you haven't already seen it, there's a good review of Tony Williams' excellent Nine Arches collection The Midlands at The Guardian - Sean O'Brien is the reviewer. It's a terrific book - read the review, then read the book.

New from Muldoon

I go through phases, where Paul Muldoon is concerned. When I'm enjoying his work, I really enjoy it. At other times, I get that feeling that you get whenever you've eaten or drunk too much of a good thing (and maybe that's all that's the problem - when he's good, you can't help reading another poem, and another, and another).

But anyway, he's got me hooked straight away this time, if this Guardian review is anything to go by. All those Anglo-Saxon references, you see. I'll add it to the list.

A heart made of worms and mud

Mark Cocker's Country Diary pieces in The Guardian are always a pleasure, but this latest one is particularly good, including as it does woodcocks and wigeon, two of my favourite things about our winter avifauna.

I've struggled to find woodcocks myself this winter - I'd hope that it's due to fewer having arrived from Scandinavia and further east, because of the mild weather, rather than an alarming decline. Wigeon, though, are plentiful locally.

The most scathing reviews ever

The Guardian had this piece the other day about particularly vicious book reviews. They're good, but I think my favourite is the one mentioned in the comments, When Saturday Comes' review of Tim Lovejoy's book.

A week in poetry

I should have pointed out more clearly the other day that there have been lots of thoughtful responses in the blogosphere to the whole Paxman and poetry thing. Here are four excellent reads to enjoy over the weekend.

George Szirtes in The Guardian - lots of good points made, and even where I disagree with George, he doesn't claim that Paxman has no right to an opinion.

Katy Evans-Bush at Baroque In Hackney - typically considered take on things, and anyway you should always read any article that contains the phrase "pellety nest".

Jon Stone at Sidekick Books - very thought-provoking, and it's good to see someone suggesting positive steps to change the current situation.

Padraig Reidy at Index on Censorship - argues with some of George's points, but also gets right to the nub of why that response I mentioned the other day was such tosh.

My own position again?
1 I don't much like the whole 'ordinary people' thing, but I'd guess that Paxman was using it as shorthand for 'people who don't in the normal course of things buy or read poetry' - in a brief interview that doesn't seem unreasonable.

2 He has every right to make such comments. He'd have every right whether he was a judge or not. Provoking a bit of debate isn't a bad thing. It is a worry if it detracts attention from the actual chosen books, but there's plenty of time before the awards are made to focus on them.

3 He might have a point about failing to engage with people.

4 If he has, though, I think he's identified the wrong reasons for this. I think it has more to do with how hard it is to casually encounter poetry.

5 That's it.

Paxman and poetry

I've been rather tardy at updating here recently, but I'm determined to get back to it. Hopefully, the next few weeks on here will be largely celebratory (new Lee Harwood book, Mark Burnhope interview, Prole, Conor Jameson's new book), but let's get started with a good old-fashioned poetry dust-up.

Jeremy Paxman, one of the judges of the Forward Prize this year, has ventured the opinion that poets should start engaging with 'ordinary people'. On Facebook and Twitter, this has provoked a good deal of talk, some of which, as Jo Bell and Katy Evans-Bush have pointed out, does seem to rather back up his point. Why should it really be such a problem to have a 'non-poet' talking about poetry?

My main argument with it, I think, is not with the problem that Paxman identifies, but the reasons he suggests for that. I don't think it has a huge amount to do with the accessibility of the actual poems, with the often false separation of poetry into 'easy' and 'difficult' camps. I think it's more to do with another kind of accessibility, with the fact that it's hard to encounter poetry casually, these days. The odd newspaper or magazine publishes the odd occasional poem, and there are projects such as Poems On The Underground that attempt to get poetry in front of the public as they go about their everyday business, but frankly, there's not enough of it. When it does appear on TV or radio, it's generally in a niche of its own, rather than alongside other artforms.

I do have a slight problem with the whole idea of 'ordinary people', 'non-poets' and so on - aren't poets ordinary people, then? But that might be down to the way the papers have presented this. Paxman has obviously been asked to stir up interest in the Prize shortlist, and he's done it. In that respect, kudos to him. At least poetry's getting talked about on the news.

The one shame is that it's overshadowed the actual shortlist - scroll down to the bottom of that Guardian article to see it.

John Clare Day

It was nice to see George Monbiot, in The Guardian, talking about the greatness of John Clare, his role as chronicler of the enclosure of great swathes of the English countryside in the early 19th century, and as elegist for what was lost.

I'd have to seriously take issue with his opening sentence, though, in which he claims that Helpston is now situated in one of the most dismal and regularised tracts of countryside in Europe. Now, the mania in this country for 'tidying up' every bit of countryside people can find is a personal bugbear, and it's undoubtedly true that in most parts of England (and parts of the rest of Britain, too), there's a depressing lack of the patchwork of habitats that would have been common back in Clare's day (although it's also worth noting that many of them would have been manmade, too).

But Helpston is no worse than most places, and a lot better than many others. It's just at the edge of the Fens, so although there are prairie-style fields in the vicinity, it's far from being unbroken expanses of intensive farmland. Just to the south, Castor Hanglands is a National Nature Reserve, and along with neighbouring Ailsworth Heath (the Emmonsails Heath of Clare's poems), retains some of its former glory. There are several woodlands, Maxey Gravel Pits (a working quarry, but a breeding site for a lot of birds), and a little further north, the lakes around Lolham* and Tallington. Regularised? No, far from it. Dismal? Not really - I think George is trying far too hard to bring Helpston itself into his argument about Clare. He really doesn't need to.

* Clare's name can be found carved into one of the arches of the bridges near Lolham that carry the East Coast mainline across one of the streams. The bridges, Lolham Brigs in his poems, have been around in one form or another since Roman times - nice that Clare left his mark on them.

Poetry reviewing

It's not often I find my way over to Facebook these days, but I have been following an interesting discussion on Rob Mackenzie's wall this week, about the way that poetry is reviewed in this country.

It's a complex subject, and to a large extent I find myself agreeing with the thrust of Jon Stone's argument (why can't poetry be reviewed in the same way that, say, film and music are?), as well as feeling a good deal of sympathy for Rob's starting-point.

I suppose one of the angles that hasn't been explored fully is where the reviews are appearing. I've no idea what The Guardian (or any of the other broadsheets) pay their reviewers, but I'd assume they do, and that would inevitably create a different situation to that of reviewers writing for a small press mag for no financial reward. While it might on the one hand make it easier for the reviewer to be critical (not having to worry about offending a potentially large proportion of the magazine's subscribers), it might also work the other way - the paper would be reluctant to consistently be too lukewarm towards the books of a regular advertiser.

In poetry mags and webzines themselves, it's a bit different. The reviewer is often writing for no reward other than a free copy of the book (although some, such as Magma, certainly pay). From personal experience, that's fine - it's a chance to read more poetry than I could otherwise afford, and especially to take a chance on books that I'd otherwise have thought looked interesting but didn't feel like shelling out for. It does mean, though, that the reviewer is often predisposed to like what they're reading - you're unlikely to take the time and effort to read the book carefully, make notes, then write the review, if it's something you just don't like.

The same's true on blogs, and that's certainly unashamedly the case here at Polyolbion. I don't get the time or the money to read anything like all the poetry I'd like to, so I'm not going to waste precious time writing a negative blog review when I could be just getting on with finding something I do like. I don't get enough time to be positive about all the things I do like, for that matter, so a great many good books go unheralded.

Finally, someone in the discussion brought up the subject of what a review is actually for. I haven't ever, I don't think, bought a book of poetry purely on the strength of a review, but a good review (as in a well written one) is often enough to spark my interest in a book that might otherwise have passed me by - again, it might well encourage me to take a few chances.

So what is a good review? Well, as Rob originally suggested, I want to see some suggestion of weak points, as well as strengths (and I can't think of a single collection I own that doesn't have at least some negatives), and I want to see both highlighted with plenty of reference to the actual text. In that, at least, I suppose it's always going to be different to any print review of film or music, where examples can only be described.