open mike poetry

History of banal poetry

There was action in Facebook recently as Tim Allen raised questions about the “lyric I”, and people generally say that they are advanced users and their scepticism about having feelings is a proof of it. “The above certainly makes more sense to me than the usual stuff said about identity. Brings back a memory of a Wessex fest from long ago when I read some of my long 'I' poem (finally published in 2014 under the name 'Copyright' - Department Press, Manchester) and I was being heckled and argued with by lots from the audience because of the obvious questions concerning the term that were going on in the poem - David Caddy might remember.”

I’m intrigued by the story of sub-prime poetry. The fact that people can mock the Lyrical I, or Ego, as unsophisticated doesn't mean that it is the lower tier of contemporary poetry. It is a lot higher than that. It is the more conventional stratum of poetry which is reviewed, put in books, taken seriously. In fact it’s hard to write. My idea is that there is a tier below the Lyrical I and that lyrical writing is relatively fanciful and ambitious. On open mikes, people don’t usually describe feelings. The tone is informal, down to earth, often a spoof of a familiar form. Sincerity isn’t the big thing. Someone less skilled will go for the grumpy, jokey, cynical, parodic, etc. bits of worn-out language, turned around a bit. Instantly recognisable. In a recent session of open-mike readers I noticed poems about the royal family, Glastonbury Festival, and the NHS. These “low hanging fruit” deliver an instantly recognisable context which the reader has already been familiarised with. The poem does not reach autonomy or strive for it. That is for a more skilled poet.

I like the idea that there is a separate history of unskilled poetry, following a different pattern in time than intelligent poetry. I always write about good poetry. But perhaps we can glance at the history of sub-prime poetry.

Stannard and I often talk about the open mike experience because we both find it so difficult to sit through. We also talked about Colin Nixon, who is famous because of an interview in Görtschacher’s book Little Magazine Profiles which singled him out as someone who had got possibly 600 poems into print but who had never gone beyond the minimum artistic standards. His poems deliver a message, their intent is perfectly clear to the reader, they say little beyond the message. He was said to be disappointed that no editor had ever accepted a book of his; he was stuck in a world of low-prestige magazines. I think bogg and krax were the ones mentioned. Martin was editing a rather good magazine in the (later) 70s and 80s (Joe Soap’s Canoe) and recalls rejecting many poems by Nixon. He could hardly get through one thick envelope before another had arrived. Nixon used a special thin paper, presumably because he was sending out so many envelopes and so many poems that postage was a large cost. Nixon (born 1939) was really systematic about sending out and that is why so many editors have bad memories of having to read his output. He can stand for the whole world of bad poetry because he was so methodical. I looked under N in the South Bank Poetry Library last time I was there and found four tiny pamphlets by Nixon, but no book. He was a civil servant, working as a housing officer (or something?) for a London borough, and his writing style owes something to civil service conventions of clarity, impersonality, and lack of features. Nixon definitely didn’t use the Lyrical I, he wanted his poems to be part of the real world and so avoided subjectivity.

If you plunge back into that time, there was a Feeling that a world of poetry and personal relations was opening in which everything would be marvellous, and that poems or magazines were doorways into that marvellous realm. Having lots of magazines and opening them to lots of poets was a consequence of the feeling. But when you opened a magazine and found it full of junk poetry, another feeling could take over: in which the new realm was full of pointless experiences and conversations and had to accommodate a great deal of bad language.
I am interested in the situation of someone who runs a bad magazine. You are full of high hopes. But once you put out a couple of bad issues, good poets avoid you. They have many other places to go. So at publication time you have a tray full of bad poems. You put them out because that was your first intent and the initial energy is still running. It is courageous to go on. But the end result is a poetry world full of bad magazines and bad poems. It is not a new realm in any way that stands up to daylight. At this point we can approach the word “elite” or “elitist”. It means, concretely, someone who doesn’t want the bad stuff. Someone who defends the idea of a new ideal space. But, as used in speech, it is a negative word. Someone who is not an elitist accepts that 90% of the poetry coming out is no good but thinks it is impolite to say so.
I am advised that the big open mike slot at a readings series which Martin and I both attend was specified by the brewery. The organiser could have the room for no fee, it is an acoustically warm room, cut off from the sounds from the bar elsewhere in the building. The brewery sees it as another bar and wants it full of people. Their policy guy thinks that most people there turn up to do their open mike spot. So the series has to have lots of open mike readers. Two breweries have quite a lot to do with staging poetry events in Nottingham. Personally, I feel that you have to have little magazines and open mike slots, there has to be a non-selective tier where people can get started. If the brewery guy thinks that the audience would be much smaller if you only had the main scheduled poets, that implies that the pulling power of those poets is limited. This is probably correct. But it is unnerving to think that the audience is basically uninterested in anyone’s poetry except their own. That is not a good feeling. But also... that brewery is pretty good at making beer.