BIT #2: How to fulfil your Dreams in a World that does not need them...

I will preface this post by noting that the meeting that took place on Monday has given me hope that a) will keep me going until the end of this year and hopefully beyond and b) will end up validating the persistence at establishing myself as a Local Poet about 1000 times over. I can say no more until things are actually in writing. Suffice it to say, I am VERY VERY VERY happy with this outcome.

Because my life is lacking in one form, having a way to balance that is very important. The last 48 hours have been the reminder, if it were needed, that once you combine art and money in a space, ethics and common sense largely disintegrate. When someone else gives you a grant in the current climate you may well become forced to show publicly your working to maintain it, and if you fail to do so… there will be people reading this for whom the true tyranny of Arts Council Funding is all too painful.

Having to make work from passion into performative can often consume your soul.

Monday would have broken me previously were it not for the Good News Portion of events. There were THREE rejections, one for the last hope I had of any long-form work seeing the light of day with a publisher. Six months later, I have this poetry back in my Inbox and it bears no resemblance to the work I am now creating: however, there is already a new home for many of these pieces.

Then there was a rejection I’d already called. I knew it would happen when I was told who the headline poets were in a particular magazine, because when someone is curating your work based on the big name draws, and none of these people align at all with how you write? There’s a less than zero chance of what you consider ‘that type of poetry’ seeing the light of day. I wonder if that fact has registered with anyone else…

I know I’d be better off not wasting my time any more with that space.

Where does leave me in the Traditional Poetry World? We’re back to pamphlets, because until I make something that either gets a) reviewed sympathetically, b) wins the right prize or c) is picked up by a ‘big name’ publisher, my chances of progression up the ladder remain unlikely. Fortunately, I can now do that process in my sleep, and actually, the more we work on that, the more subversive my output is becoming.

Knowing that nearly eight years of mostly disappointment has brought me to a point where I’m taken seriously across many disciplines is useful. I can still be an Emergent Artist at 59. I only lose that title when the established creative sphere decides I’m successful enough, so as long as I can bite my tongue and choose when to speak truth to power, I will remain golden. At this point, that task might end up being my biggest obstacle.

I have to be REALLY careful of what's said and done going forward.[*]

This shouldn’t be the way it is, but when your mental health poetry is considered ‘not good enough’ and your use of white space in work is flagged as suspect by living legends and your attitude to the craft has not been honed via an MA in ANYTHING, there will be those who have already decided your ability is wanting. Right now, if I had the money to burn, that it would cost to further educate myself to what is considered the required standard, I’d donate it to medical charities overseas. They need that far more than I'll ever need the qualification.

What I desperately dream of now is a level playing field. It would be optimal having the politics of fairness prioritised over personal wealth. It would also really help if people learnt how to write a decent rejection letter with their intent not loaded as criticism or tepid apology, but as I cannot fix ANY of these shortcomings, we are forced to work with the things that can be influenced.

This is where I am; this, the space in which I am determined to grow.

[*] Or I could stop giving a fuck and burn the whole fucking thing to the ground. Watch this Space for further developments.