{"id":544,"date":"2025-08-17T09:41:47","date_gmt":"2025-08-17T09:41:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/keithchandlerpoet.com\/?p=544"},"modified":"2025-08-17T09:41:51","modified_gmt":"2025-08-17T09:41:51","slug":"changes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/keithchandlerpoet.com\/?p=544","title":{"rendered":"Changes"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Changes \u2013 a look back at changes to the \u201cPoetry Scene\u201d over the past 60 years<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Finding myself arrived at the age of 80, I have been thinking about some of the changes since I first tried to write poetry at the age of 14. As I remember it \u2013 but please allow for the inaccuracies and vagueness of an ageing memory – opportunities for writing and enjoying poetry were much more limited back in the late 50s, early 60s. Everything to do with poetry felt to be overshadowed by a few \u201cmajor\u201d male poets. The ghosts of Auden and Graves were still active, to which the sonorous offerings of Dylan Thomas \u2013 sometimes with an overload of sound over sense but, at their best, extraordinary – seemed to be a healthy antidote. But mostly it was the austere figure of T S Eliot which bestrode the poetic culture of that time. I have since come to consider the quality of Eliot\u2019s oeuvre as variable, with the huge importance of Prufrock<\/em> and The Waste Land <\/em>paling into the thinner beauties of Ash Wednesday <\/em>and the Four Quartets <\/em>. Also I have come to realise that far from being classically impersonal \u2013 at a remove from his art – as he wished to present himself in his critical writing, his poetry was probably driven and riven by stronger personal conflicts than he himself could acknowledge. Anyway T.S.E. did make those huge modernist stylistic breakthroughs which, prodded forward by Ezra Pound, could perhaps only have come from across the Atlantic. Later, my pantheon of Poet Heroes was enlarged by the emerging presences of Larkin, Hughes and Gunn. Hughes I relished primarily as a Nature Poet. His virile recreation of the animal world I found particularly useful when as a young teacher I was trying to engage the interest of male adolescents. Gunn of course was among the first to embody the interests of the gay community But it was Larkin with his wry common sense and accessibility who for many became the pre-eminent poet-exemplar of the time. Of course there were also a few female poets around but in the late sixties they were thought, at least by me in my ignorance, to be peripheral.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The small world of UK poetry publishing was mainly restricted to just five or six Big publishers. Led by Faber their lists looked fearfully white and London-centric. A few years later in 1976 I was fortunate to be selected by a new publisher, Carcanet, for inclusion in an anthology entitled 10 English Poets. <\/em>We lucky ten <\/em>were all (yes, you\u2019ve guessed it) male, white and predominately Oxbridge educated. That anthology was perhaps an uncharacteristic look backwards from Carcanet; more typically, together with the emergence of a few other regional outsiders like Bloodaxe \u201cup North\u201d and Peterloo \u201cdown\u201d in Cornwall, the far-venturing Carcanet from Manchester seemed to signal cracks in the icy monopoly of London. Tony Harrison from Leeds, reactionary in style but politically activist in subject matter, became a favourite of mine. But so rapidly has the competitive jungle of poetry evolved since then that his name and verse is now rarely encountered?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As well as an increasing regionalism in English and Scottish (and Eire-ish) poetry the more exciting developments of the 70s seemed to come spilling over from the other side of the Atlantic \u2013 from the Beats (prominently Ginsberg) and from the east coast the historical and troubled voice of Robert Lowell, . Impressive American female voices, prefigured by Marianne Moore and Elizabeth Bishop, were also emerging. Belatedly I was beginning to discover that women poets could be more than just \u201cminor\u201deccentrics like Stevie Smith. In the UK we discovered, for instance that Carol Ann Duffy, perhaps by way of the \u201cpop poetry\u201d movement from Liverpool, was producing wonderful love poetry – humorous as well as lyrical, always speaking up for women. In fact I reckon that, following Duffy\u2019s strong example, most of the most powerful and interesting new poetry since the sixties has come from women…so many of them, so variously talented. And I mustn\u2019t forget the steadying influence of Seamus Heaney over this period. My guess is that he will be remembered as the psychologist of rural childhood as much as for his oblique political commentaries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But what now? Well, broadly the Poetry \u201cScene\u201d has continued to expand at an exponential pace and now features so many \u201cpresses\u201d and \u201cpoets\u201d and multifarious \u201cactivities\u201d that it is very difficult to keep up with it all. Part of the bewildering diversification and decentralisation of so many new voices has come from the increasing number of non-English, often post-colonial, poets writing in English. Another very large contemporary group seems to comprise poets speaking out of various spectrums of physical and mental \u201cdifference\u201d- transexual, ADHD, autistic, physically \u201cchallenged\u201d etc etc. At a recent festival, one reader made a point of introducing herself as mixed race, lesbian and, most importantly, suffering from the early onset of Parkinsonism. I tend to classify a lot of this kind of \u201cspeaking out of personal difference\u201d as \u201cIdentity Poetry\u201d – spokespersons for minorities prepared to declare \u201cThis is who I am and this has been my life\u201d. Some refugees, some second generation immigrants, they mostly have interesting, often shocking, stories to tell. Of course, the largest element in this numerical expansion of \u201cpoets\u201d must be the huge number of women who, under-represented for centuries, are now involved in all aspects of poetry. Feminist poetry, stand up comedic poetry, international poetry in translation, \u201cstreet\u201d or \u201cpunk\u201d poetry – so many voices …<\/p>\n\n\n\n

An enabling factor in this movement towards multiplicity has been the advent of desktop publishing since the 80s. Concomitant with the ability to print on demand (\u201cPOD\u201d) has been a proliferation of regional publishing. Every city or region seems to have its lively group of poetry enthusiasts, often successful at widening popular interest by organising \u201clive\u201d or on-line events – \u201copen mic\u201d, \u201cslam fests\u201d, \u201chip hop\u201d poetry and so on. Attending a recent slam I was momentarily shocked to hear a young woman stand up and launch into a riff which featured the refrain: \u201cPlease don\u2019t cum on my brand new sneakers.\u201d As well as many groups popularising a variety of performance styles, a smaller number of groups can be found who concentrate on the more experimental and \u201cdifficult\u201d kinds of poetry, often through home-made interestingly named magazines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To add to this sense of confusion and multiplicity a parallel development has been the growth of \u201cacademic\u201d courses in poetry. They are usually baited with the idea of developing the students\u2019 own \u201ccreative writing.\u201d In my youth such courses in poetry were unheard of…which is probably why I am so jealous of them – the lecturers I mean, as well as the participants. Having a job in Creative Writing seems to be a necessary part of a poet\u2019s CV these days? And of course with so many Graduates of Poetry comes an ever-expanding need for opportunities for them to be published. A side issue has been the ubiquity of poetry competitions. Many \u201cpoetry businesses\u201d seem to fund themselves with competitions, often linked to festivals. Do they help to discover new talents? Inevitably they appeal to the more privileged classes with larger purses and egos who can afford to waste \u00a35, \u00a310 or even \u00a320 on having a go at these literary lotteries. As ever the poor, however talented, won\u2019t get the chance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While generally welcoming the more friendly tones and wider range of opportunities in contemporary poetry, I do sometimes wonder what the real effects of all this poetical activity might be. A kind of diminution is suggested to me, for instance, by a lessening in the actual size of poems these days. Some publishers now ask for poems to be submitted in the smaller A5 format and competition organisers nearly always want a 40 line limit. Does this shrinking (sometimes a literal marginalisation of poetry in some of the posher journals) make for a shrinking in theme, subject matter, imaginative scope, or even in the ultimate relevance of poetry? I don\u2019t know.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To conclude, much of the hectic liveliness of so many different contemporary \u201cpoetry scenes\u201d certainly feels more healthy than those bad old days of mainly all-white London-dominated male coteries that I remember from the late 50s. But there may be dangers also – perhaps of some dilution of quality in so much quantity?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Changes \u2013 a look back at changes to the \u201cPoetry Scene\u201d over the past 60 years Finding myself arrived at the age of 80, I have been thinking about some of the changes since I first tried to write poetry at the age of 14. As I remember it \u2013 but please allow for the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-544","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/keithchandlerpoet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/544","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/keithchandlerpoet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/keithchandlerpoet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/keithchandlerpoet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/keithchandlerpoet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=544"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/keithchandlerpoet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/544\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":545,"href":"https:\/\/keithchandlerpoet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/544\/revisions\/545"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/keithchandlerpoet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=544"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/keithchandlerpoet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=544"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/keithchandlerpoet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=544"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}