The Next Generation poetry event happened in the UK last year. Fortunately Poetry is news that stays news. Thanks to my local public library I've recently had a chance to read about half of the 20 poets chosen to lead UK poetry into the future. I knew it was a PR drive. What I hadn't realised is quite how much of a publisher-driven stunt it was. See
http://www.poetrybookshoponline.com/next_generation.asp
for details.
In any anthology or selection of this type there are bound to be items whose inclusion seems inexplicable. About 20% fall into that category for me. Maz, Margaret Moore etc seem more interesting and youthful than several of these NextGen poets.
Each poet has a narrow range, and the majority of the poets seem to have gone to the same workshop. The stylistic range is from anecdotal to mute-martian, written in broken prose. Exceptions are Hannah (who rhymes), Oswald (who's non-mainstream) and Agbabi (who's non-WASP). Tokenism?
There's seeming censorship against the academic and the abstract, which might in turn account for the limited range of genres. The diction's educated but rarely intellectual. It's strange that though the poets "explore issues" like Race, Beauty, etc, they shy away from any connection with experts in Sociology, Aesthetics, etc, prefering to present an incident at a bus-stop or overheard conversation at the Tate Museum's canteen. You might object that poetry's not
supposed to be sociology. I'd reply by saying that there's no reason why poetry shouldn't call upon the expertise of those in other fields. By not doing so it risks marginalising itself even more. I think the rule of thumb should be to show what can be shown, and tell the rest, rather than restrict oneself to writing only about what can be shown. Poetry's not Pictionary.
You may have heard that we in the UK are still relaxed about Form. Maybe, but judging from this selection, Form's on its last legs. For many of the poets Form means leaving every third line blank. When poets lapse into meter it seems rather clumsy to me. For example, I find this couplet a misjudged, Nashy mouthful
while an old dandelion unpicks her shawl
and one by one the small spent oak flowers fall
and I don't know why the following has been lamed.
and row as far as Totnes
and there get out and stand,
outcasts of the earth, kings
of the green island England.
Imagery is in general disappointing. One poet describes chestnuts as "Miniature mines"! Lack of ambition abounds. As the publicity blurb says of one collection, these are "poems that remind us why memory is such an important human faculty". Too true.
So please don't judge us Brits by these poets. I wish I could excuse them by virtue of their youth, but there was no upper age limit - I'm younger than some of these flagbearers.
Threaded Mode
