Comments on: Are Too Many Poetry Books Being Published?

By: Rob Mackenzie

Rob Mackenzie — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 10:56:56 +0000

And here’s yet another blog topic for the New Year – visibility and relevance. How do we make poetry more visible? How can poets (of diverese styles) engage with audiences in ways that make their work relevant to more people? We have a lot to talk about, come January.

By: Chris Hamilton-Emery

Chris Hamilton-Emery — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 07:54:04 +0000

Bookscan responded for a recent poetry summit meeting that there were roughly 10,500 active poetry ISBNs in 2008, 36% more than in 2007. The market increased by 1%, though the retail market continues to contract each — 10% down on 2007. average poetry sales are 98 copies per ISBN, though the variances are huge. One senior bookseller remarked to me recently that only six poets really mattered for retail sales and that you can’t sell things to people that they don’t want.

However, my own business’s turnover increased by 300% over the past three and a half years, though admittedly from a very small base! Like Neil I suspect the growth is not happening in bookshops. The future has to lie in diversity and growth and there are many competitive forces acting against that for complex reasons. I honestly don’t know a tougher sector of publishing: it’s fiercely competitive. We so need more readers and wider audiences and that involves finding techniques to take poets to readers and for poets to engage with readers. I think there are two key issues to tackle: visibility and relevance.

By: Viewpoint: Too Many Poetry Books | Incwriters

Viewpoint: Too Many Poetry Books | Incwriters — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 17:10:23 +0000

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By: Kona Macphee

Kona Macphee — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 13:24:45 +0000

Goodness, it’s refreshing to hear an optimistic perspective on the poetryverse – thanks Jacqueline! There’s so much doom, gloom, spleen and paranoia in our little microcosm; it regularly makes me go and hide under the duvet with a nice fat SF novel.

If there’s one psychological given throughout human history, it’s our tendency to apocalyptic anxieties coupled with a pervasive sense that everything is going to hell in a handbasket anyway…

By: Rob Mackenzie

Rob Mackenzie — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 07:44:23 +0000

Yes, some good points there. Best not to get too depressed about it all.

Sheeagh’s point about writers being liable to get better as they age deserves a thread of its own. I might try writing one for this blog, maybe in the New Year.

By: Sheenagh Pugh

Sheenagh Pugh — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 07:32:00 +0000

That’s very true re playwrights and you don’t need to be unfashionable, just not quite young enough… there are a lot of nurturing schemes for new playwrights under 25, but I know a coplue of people who left it until their late twenties before deciding they wanted to write plays, and frankly you can forget it – it’s really hard to break in at that age. Of course there is some obsessing about Yoof among commentators on the poetry scene – as if any writer weren’t liable to get better with more experience of both life and handling words – but it isn’t near as bad as in drama.

By: Alison Brackenbury

Alison Brackenbury — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 04:52:20 +0000

I think Jacqueline’s point about the variety of doors now open to the poet is a very good (and unusually optimistic) one. I have often thought that I would hate to be an unfashionable playwright, with a pile of scripts which had never made it into the bright light of performance!

By: Jacqueline Saphra

Jacqueline Saphra — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 10:10:36 +0000

Just to put this into perspective: it is still easier to get a poem published than it is to get a film script made, a novel published or a play staged. Whatever people might say about the difficulty of getting published in the world of poetry, it is more democratic and easier than any other medium. There are so many outlets, although of course the audience is smaller. And a poem doesn’t take up much space. Money has a lot to do with it; poetry can be written and published on a shoestring budget and there is always the performance aspect if you want an audience. Most of us who are engaged in the process of editing, publishing or running events are doing it for the love of the medium. And in what other genre would you be able to meet the finest poets of our generation and have a chat with them? Imagine if Martin Scorsese ran small seminars, or you could have a one to one script surgery with Deborah Warner? Or meet Michael Caine at a festival and have a drink with him? Or spend a week in a house in Devon with Sam Mendes working on a film script?

The democratic nature of the poetry world is both its blessing and its curse. There are thousands of people out there clamouring to be heard, and anyone can set themselves up as a publisher or promoter, however sound or unsound their judgement. The mediocre and bad are published alongside the great and transcendent, but we can’t change that. All we can do is make our choices as informed as possible and keep buying the books.

By: Rob Mackenzie

Rob Mackenzie — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 18:42:36 +0000

I’m just going to link in to this discussion initiated by Roddy over at the ‘Poets On Fire’ forum. Pretty depressing (so far anyway).

http://z11.invisionfree.com/Poets_On_Fire/index.php?showtopic=1789

But what do we think of this? And what’s the answer (attract more readers, I know…)?

By: Roddy Lumsden

Roddy Lumsden — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 01:38:39 +0000

I agree with Sheenagh’s post, apart from the London thing – a quick survey of poets who have become established / acclaimed / whatever verb we’re happy with in the past decade or so shows poets are as likely to be in Devon, Shetland, Belfast, Aberystwyth, Aberdeenshire, Liverpool, Northumberland as London – of course, London has a sway, and poets can get more chances to read aloud here – but the ‘movers and shakers’ wotrh their salt are aware of what’s happening elsewhere.