Here's an article from yesterday's
Guardian, "
Poetry world split over polemic attacking 'amateur' work by 'young female poets'", which is in reaction to a
PN Review article by Rebecca Watts called "
The cult of the noble amateur". Watts starts off with Kaur, but her main focus is Holly McNish, whose book she'd been asked to review, a request she refused as, "to do so for a poetry journal would imply that it deserves to be taken seriously as poetry". Kate Temple and Ocean Vuong also get a mention as do T.S. Eliot and Donald Trump. So, something for everyone I guess!
A couple of quotes from Watts' article:
Quote:
WHY IS THE POETRY WORLD pretending that poetry is not an art form? I refer to the rise of a cohort of young female poets who are currently being lauded by the poetic establishment for their ‘honesty’ and ‘accessibility’ – buzzwords for the open denigration of intellectual engagement and rejection of craft that characterises their work.
[...]
McNish’s poems consist of assemblages of words that relate to familiar topics. Their effect is limited to recognition, which merely reinforces the reader or audience member’s sense of selfhood. As McNish and her critics acknowledge, her fans are drawn to the poems by the themes – sex, relationships and perceived social inequalities – as well as by McNish’s ‘unpretentious’ presentation, where unpretentious means abundant in expletives and unintimidating to anyone who considers ignorance a virtue
|