[ross hamilton hill]

Erik, it's not an either or situation, but I think I'm right that most people don't read poetry, most publishers don't publish it and most if not all poets don't make a living from it, that is unusual in the arts, when even a poet as famous as Seamus Heaney has a real job as an academic because even he could not make a living from poetry. ( maybe he could but you know what I mean) that is the commercial side of the equation. This situation exists in no other major art form. Why? As I see it the two major poets of my generation were Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen, at their best their songs are poems. Neither can sing, Cohen can barely hold a note and Dylan has a terrible tone and a limited range, but they are great poets and songwriters, most of their songs would not rate as poems but many do. They have done more for poetry, formal poetry, than anyone else I can think of.
And my other point is poetry has always been an aural and oral tradition, it only became a print tradition around the time of the Romantics. Byron, Scott and Wordsworth all made an excellent living from the sale of their books.
I havn't studied this closely but certainly by the 20th century poets stopped being poets and became part-time poets who made their living elsewhere. There were exceptions and often poets got grants from the government or won prizes but sales of poetry fell and by my time around the 70's , book publishers never expected to make money out of poetry books and by now very few publishers will accept poetry submissions. Again their are exceptions but it takes sales of around 5000 to 10000 copies for a publsiher to break even on a book launch.
So my point is formal poetry actually moved over to song, while free verse was self published for small, very smalll enclaves centered around Universities.
I think the new generation of poets probably know this instinctively. Kate Tempest is immensely popular because she delivers her poems, all memorized, with enormaous verve and passion. I'm sure if I asked my kids (now 28 and 30) what poetry influenced them they would mention songs, not poems on the page, I remember my son listening to Korn when he was a teen, very confronting lyrics, the sort of subject matter never found in songs before.
Anyway it's specualtion, in 50 years time we will problably speak what is called Spanglish, a mixture of languages, and performers will appear in your living room as holograms, I was imagining been able to watch the Theban Plays and have the whole chorus chanting at me in this way.
But I wont be around for that.