Stages in a poetry career
 

Mapping Poetic Emergence 1.0 tries to chart career stages. As it points out, it needs revising in the light of web developments, but some of you might find it useful. I'm on its crowded plateau.

It doesn't seem to give any weight to luck.

I've been mulling this for a while, and I could pick at a number of points, most of them related to the internet, the explosion in the number of magazines, and the expanding number of little publishers, self-publishers, and e-pubs.

But most of all I wonder, what purpose is served by this list of criteria? Who feels the need for it?

At first I thought this thing was a parody of the academic paper that makes a huge and unnecessary fuss over the perfectly obvious - the early reference to a "generously funded" project pointed that way, and all those wonderful Welsh names helped - but it went on far too long, and wasn't funny enough, and after some further poking I convinced myself that it was both generously funded (the Lever soap money, apparently - couldn't they just underwrite a villanelle competition?) and real.

[Editing back: I know, I know: Objections and quibbles sound like sour grapes, a veiled kind of Hmmph-this-doesn't-rate-me-highly-enough. But I'm trying not to sound like that. I'd like to know more about the motivation.]

"I'd like to know more about the motivation" - Maryann

All I know is that they say "we need to have a public framework against which the judgements we make about which living writers we should devote most attention to can be justified". I guess they couldn't get away with merely reading the poets' work.

I think docs like this can be useful to [budding] poets who don't know how the poetry biz works. And for poets who want to be read there are reminders that there's more to it than writing poems. For UK/Welsh people it gives a list of mags worth submitting to.

"... the explosion in the number of magazines, and the expanding number of little publishers, self-publishers, and e-pubs." - these aren't easy to assess though, partly because longevity is a factor in their significance. Some worthwhile e-pubs have already disappeared.

I see that the site has an academic affiliation, and so I suspect that "we" is the community that teaches creative writing. That explains what I'd consider an overemphasis on a poet's academic role in this theoretical progression. What about Larkin, the librarian who didn't like to give readings? What about someone like Alison Brackenbury, who works in the family metal-finishing business? What about our local Welshwoman, Ann Drysdale?

A sad commentary. Perhaps they should title the document "How to know who's hot so you know whom to pay attention to and whom to ignore; never mind what you actually like."

Emphasis on "budding," I think. Or perhaps we should substitute "student."

That's true enough.

Those who can afford it have used Duotrope to generate such a list. There are also running totals of Pushcart wins by magazine.

That's true too. But the number of small magazines means that a poet who's trying hard will probably skip right over this list's idea of level 1 and get acceptances at multiple magazines. Another matter this list ignores is the growing practice of making massively multiple submissions of any one poem (which I dislike, but I don't run the po world).

A: This flies in the face of all I’ve been taught, which is: Get your chops together and pick a fight with the champ. You will be knocked on your ass, but you will be much further up the road than you are likely to reach in any 6-step career emergence plan. You will also be where you belong, and probably, therefore, in a good place. At any rate, you will not be paying any attention to a career management formula.

B: A managed career never emerges. This is especially true in the otts and leddis.