[Matt Q]

Hi Mark,

Good to see you back. So this is in response to your post #31.

So, how do editors "know"? While gender is sometimes, but not always, attributable from a name, surnames clearly aren't the best predictors of ethnicity, and even photos, if provided, don't always help: Is that person white or is it a tan? Sexuality is even harder to guess.

All of that said, the content/theme of the poems is sometimes going be a big clue. If you Jee Leong Koh's poetry, say, you won't be left in any doubt about his sexuality. So, even if you only discriminated by theme only, you'd manage to skew representation to a degree. Clearly, disabled poets don't necessarily always write about disability, say, but poets writing about disability are much more likely to be disabled.

However, the argument for systematic exclusion doesn't really require that editors are consciously choosing to discount poets or themes on the grounds of race, class, sexuality, gender, (dis)ability etc. All you'd need to accept is that, if you get, say, a bunch of upper-class, oxbridge-educated, heterosexual, white men, then on average they're prone to have a subset of life experiences, beliefs, tastes and interests that will influence/skew their choice of poetry even when reading it 'blind' and this in turn will skew the demographic of poets they choose to publish. Even if, as you suggest, they only aim to choose what they consider "excellent" poetry.

Which is a bit like saying, when it's film night, if you only let the heterosexual men choose the films they want to see, you'll likely get a different set of films chosen, on average, than if they're chosen by a different sub-group. Or maybe, it's like saying, if you get a bunch of rich, expensively schooled (and traumatised by being separated from their parents at age 8), Oxbridge graduates together and put them in government, their limited life-experience may lead them to introduce social policies that fuck over the poor without any real understanding of the consequences of their actions. A purely hypothetical, example this last one.

I don't imagine anyone is suggesting that we should, or do, prefer or relate to only what is produced by those in analogous situations to our own. Clearly, as human beings, we have a fair bit in common despite our differences. We do also have differences, and we can benefit from and often enjoy reading about experiences other than our own. There are also situations in which we would like to hear others illuminate experiences related to our own. I'm generally interested to read poems about the experience of psychosis, or psychiatric hospitals, say. All of the above, though, seems like an argument for diversity.

I also don't think that one member of a group can or should be expected to fully or accurately represent the group they are a member of. Though, I also don't know that that would be an argument for having no representatives from said group. A solitary black member of the editorial staff can't represent all black people, let alone all non-white people, and probably will quickly get fed up of being expected to if that's their role. But would we expect an all-white staff do a better job of this? A couple of black poets in a magazine issue won't speak for all black readers, but having none, surely, is likely to have the magazine speak for/to them even less. Also, I don't know that it's so much the poets job to speak for or represent the reader. Personally, I'd be happy to see a poem addressing schizophrenia (not my diagnosis) in which the N has a very different experience and view of mental illness than me. It wouldn't represent me or speak for me so much, but it's likely to speak to me.

I guess one way to look at all this is to consider the claim that it'd be absolutely fine for all decisions about what gets published to be taken by straight, white, financially stable, able-bodied, neurotypical, Oxbridge-educated men, because they'd choose based on excellence only and their take on excellence would be an objective measure. Or, that all the poems ever published could be written by straight, white, financially stable, able-bodied, neurotypical, Oxbridge-educated men, and all readers will be perfectly catered to and nobody's experience of the world would be excluded, since all good poems reference a universal human experience. Both seem obviously false to me.

Questions about how diversity is measured, what constitutes enough, whether that's been achieved already, and if not, what corrective measures would be useful, are a different matter. If you think the situation is fine now, that's great. But I'd be interested to know what you are that basing that on. Just as I'm interested to know what claims to the contrary are based on. The absence of solid statistics on who submits -- as opposed to who gets chosen -- definitely makes it hard to establish definitively what's going on.

-Matt