| Home | Review | Essay | Misc | About |
| . |
|
Currently Under Essay: |
| The
Next Generation Poets: Resistance is Futile
|
||
One is reminded, perhaps a little cruelly, of Sylvia Plath's morbid boast: "I have done it again./ One year in every ten/ I manage it - ". Well, the UK’s prestigious PBS (Poetry Book Society, they who dole out the TS Eliot prize, among other goodies) has managed to do it again, ten years later, though not quite with the finality of dear SP. Last time, it seemed to make more sense, because it was driven by a certain pent-up necessity, like great sex after a long-delayed date; this time, it has already sort of fizzled in apologies and shrugs, more like a rain-check than a consummation. What this decade-shaking "it" that they did was no mean feat: to birth a new "poetic generation". Canadians don't quite do this yet (even as we do have our sign post anthologies, like Lee's The New Canadian Poets 1970-1985) but maybe the practice will catch on. In 1994 (which is not precisely a watershed year, just when it first happened) the PBS helped sponsor the "New Generation" promotion, which was basically a ripple effect from the dramatic (and now distant) "Cool Britannia" moment, when bands like Oasis, and artists like Damien Hirst, made going to pubs and puking synonymous with talent and success; what they lacked in Nivenesque sophistication, they made up for in "laddish" fame. This moment literally went up in smoke a few weeks back, with the already iconic (for some in the culture industry in London’s spinland) warehouse fire that managed to destroy hundreds of key artworks from the last few decades of experiment and shamelessness; the nation cheered this loss as they would a Man United goal. Seeing that their guitar-playing, installation-art making peers were cool and respectable all at once, the then "under 40" crowd of poets, led by PR savvy Simon Armitage, created a movement which was, to quote the man "alert to shifts in the language, appalled by elitism, empowered by a free education and not at all embarrassed or apologetic about our lack of literary pedigree". Except for the first criteria, of course, none of this automatically qualifies anyone to be a poet, but it does express the sort of art-as-gesture which seems to typify current British poetry, which takes place, so often, at a sub-atomic level of tone and twitch too subtle for anyone not UK-born to detect. It seems to boil down to matters of class and birthplace (born in the North, not educated at Oxbridge, perhaps having working class parents), and a sense of hip entitlement ("why can't poets wear better clothes and like football?"). In America, in the 90s, this sort of the-marginal-goes-to-Hollywood format led to "slam poetry" but Britain is more conservative, and, after Larkin, and the exquisitely arch pop of The Smiths, their subversion tends to be more controlled and witty, less ghetto-enraged and artless. This New Generation promotion proved to be exceptionally productive for all involved. Armitage’s book Zoom! sold more than 10,000 copies (no one seems to have told him it was the name of a very naff PBS show in America – as in Public Broadcasting Service) and by the turn of the millennium, six years later, several key members of the 20 poets from this "School" were among the most influential literary figures in the UK, such as Lavinia Greenlaw and Don Paterson (like Armitage, Faber & Faber poets). These writers are still very good, and it is hard to imagine that their talent, combined with their excellent publishing credits, would not have gifted them with renown at any rate. However, at the time, a great deal of hoopla emerged from this promotion. It is easy to see why. In the UK, poetry had not been yet fused with the more open, and less elitist popular forms at which their society excels, such as the making of James Bond films, Monty Python television shows, or a Rolling Stones album. Their attempts at "Beat poetry" in the 60s (the so-called Children of Albion) seemed a little tamer than Ginsberg's derangement of the senses, and petered out by the 80s, when listening to Wishbone Ash was no longer an impressive thing to do with one's time. Indeed, until the New Generation Poets, UK schools, whether Romantic or Movement, or Martian, were quite small, intimate affairs (sometimes the poets didn't actually meet in person) and were based on clearly shared stylistic and thematic concerns. Many critics felt that to market and sell a large group of dissimilar writers to the public like so much Spam was crass and unworthy of the elevated and often isolated calling of the true poet. Others, impressed by the sales figures and cultural notoriety achieved by the Granta young novelists promotions, felt poetry should not remain the wallflower during the 90s exuberance, with its bubble of cool cache and aspirational Islington lifestyles. This was, after all, the age of Tony Blair. Waiting in Blair's shadows, as we all know now, is his dour doppelganger, the truly Scottish Gordon Brown, who masks his shyness, it has been reported, with unnerving deep volcanic guffaws punctuated by morose silence. Brown is the evil twin of the Labour honeymoon, as his glum and practical presence has underwritten the rise and fall of the Blair Empire, built on "spin" and polish. It is Brown who may, next election, become Labour's "cleaning woman" (to paraphrase The Pretenders) and pick up the pieces with all the panache of a Calvinist librarian. All this to say, the times have changed in the UK, and post-Iraq War, institutions and the media do not have the same ability to generate an infinite supply of horse-hype. In the Age of Brown, as this period may come to be called, the New Generation makes way for the… Next Generation. Announced on June 5, 2004, one day before the massive D-Day celebrations, the new list of 20 poets seems to have been born under the sign of Inadequate. Surely, the marketing gurus who steered the original young guns onto the Gold Beach of fame and fortune in 1994 became strange and indifferent gods this time around. How else to explain placing their launch date so inelegantly close to a rolling-news black hole? Furthermore, their choice outlet for announcement, the Guardian Weekend, is not even the Guardian Review (the literary organ of the great paper) but their glossy and lower-IQ brother. Nor do the poets get the front cover image. This is startling, since the cover instead belongs to "Crime Scene: An Investigation into Britain's hidden gang rape epidemic" which is a more important topic, but undoubtedly a less upbeat one. Brown Age, indeed. Inside, on page 26, Simon Armitage introduces the new 20 poets (he jokily and rightly brands them "the competition") with the inevitable Star Trek joke. He makes the Britpop connections. And, even as a member of the seven-judge panel (which also included a member of Radiohead and Andrew Motion, the poet laureate), does a deft Pilate. His hands rinse more clean line by line. Armitage admits that "several important and well-established poets" did not make the final cut (chosen from over 100 first books published since 1994) and that he pushed hard for several who didn't make it. He also apologizes for the absence of any writers of colour, barring the brilliant performance poet Patience Agbabi. Under their group photo, is the caption "Life on the line" which, once again, doesn't sound very Blairite and fun. It sounds very urgent and challenged; this is, after all, the 21st century, let's not play too content. The 20 ("Britain’s best new poets") are, despite being middle-aged and almost all white, gender balanced to a tee (11 women, 9 men) which must be something of a first. They are also, unlike, say, the sort of spread Vanity Fair does on similar occasions (but with celebrities people have heard of) not particularly well-dressed or attractive. This seems about right. With the exception of hearth-throb Owen Sheers, they are not destined for telegenic greatness. Nor do they want to be. They are, well, poets, with pale skin, spots, glasses, bellies, thinning hair and thrift shop clothes. One almost wants to airlift in some glitz, or scream, "Bring Alistair Campbell back!" But no, this is better, and more sincere. These look the sort of geezers to actually think rising crime more important than poems. This is not the place to name the names, since that place is much more efficiently at the Poetry Book Society and elsewhere on The Guardian. Suffice it to say, several of the necessary suspects were selected, such as Paul Farley, Sophie Hannah, Alice Oswald, Maurice Riordan, Pascale Petit, Jean Sprackland, Robin Robertson and Gwyneth Lewis. Several major contemporary poets are absurdly absent, such as Roddy Lumsden, Kate Clanchy and John Stammers, as well as a raft of "multicultural" voices and anyone bordering on the avant-garde. I also miss Sarah Corbett and Polly Clark. There are several inevitable surprises, such as the quite young Leontia Flynn. Nick Drake, Tobias Hill, Henry Shukman, Catherine Smith and Matthew Francis must have guardian angels: they are all very fine poets, but so too are many of the 80-plus not winnowed out in the strange jury process (which is rumoured to have included judges not reading all the books). One almost wants to say minnowed out, then. These twenty will travel the length and breadth of the land, and no doubt get to meet Radiohead at some point, ad nauseam, while their peers, who form the majority, will be forced to stew their bitterness into grace and humility. It seems that such events are like the sorts of nets that catch great numbers of tuna, but also kill the lovely single dolphin in their midst. Somewhere in the UK, the latest Keats is being heart-broken by the "squalor of the mind" (to quote Morrissey) that is our public whirlwind encounter with culture in a world that has little valour, and less appreciation for the fragile tenacity of the poet. May this unacknowledged genius thrive, despite not being part of this "Generation's" less magical, less mysterious, tour.
Want to comment on this item? (discuss) |
||
| |
||
| Essay Links: Todd
Swift |
||
| |
||
| Essay Archive | ||
| . | ||
Todd
Swift is a Canadian poet/critic/activist/screenwriter/editor/performance
artist currently living in London, England. His books of poetry
include | Home | Review | Essay | Misc | About |
|
Bookninja © Copyright 2003/2004 |
||||
