Writing the Perfect Beast #26

Starting in October 2005, I decided to talk honestly about the business of how I write poetry. There are people who teach how to create poetry, how to format it, how to submit and how publishing in general works. I am not seeing that many people doing work on what you need to do with your brain and mental attitudes to make that stick, grow and then evolve. HI THERE.

Let’s see if we can change that.

To be considered relevant I must be categorised.

There must be two other poets I am able to compare myself as ‘similar’ to, allowing readers to decide whether my work is of interest to them.  I must be able to summarise my work in a fashion that allows others to do less work and puts all the onus on me. If I cannot do these things effectively, I will not succeed as a poet. [*] I can look at the table, and walk round it, but a seat at it is not a given.

I may never find a seat unless I compromise. This has led to a protracted period of fairly intensive introversion, and resulted this week in one, significant decision. Maybe here, at this point in my journey, it is time to raise the digit and stop trying to be the person whose work is easily accessible. Maybe it is high time some other people did the fucking legwork for a change and engaged their brains.

I suspect, over time, I will find compromise, but it isn’t happening now.

The notional subtitle to this post is ‘How to be yourself when the vast majority of your industry seems to have little interest in your outlook’. I’m enough of a realist to accept that there are other people doing a better fist of the ‘autistic artist’ genre ahead of me, and as a result, my work is often reduced to the level of derivative second best. If I'm lucky, someone will offer useful insight before they reject me.

A publisher has, in a email of recent times, called my work ‘unsaleable’ based on the marketplace. Of course, the quality of that work is irrelevant, it has nothing to do with ability or effort. It’s whether work has been published previously (thus proving its quality) so that it can then be published again and become part of someone else’s long-term contribution to the literary landscape.

My cynicism here remains largely redundant, of course, because trying to alter a model which rewards the people making the books first and not those writing them has always been the case, unless you are extraordinarily lucky. Only by submitting is there ever a chance of learning intent from publishers. When you have been told work is unsaleable, you are freed from the tyranny of conforming.

I publish this 'feedback' for several reasons. I paid for a close reading (which is what this remains) and find myself accepting this person is comprehensively misinterpreting everything I wrote. In that regard, I'm pretty pleased they didn't find my work a good fit, because it turns out they're a really bad fit for me. I now have to ask myself whether these poems are doing the job I wrote them for.

The bigger hurdle to overcome in my mind right now is that if this is the way publishers will interpret work on a daily basis, I am so screwed. I need to keep believing that somewhere there is a publisher that 'gets me' enough to take a chance on the work. However, increasingly it is becoming apparent this will not be enough to save my immortal soul from it's inevitable damnation.

This is why I am moving poetry into art spaces that I completely oversee.

How do I change my own negativity into something with a positive outcome?

The answer is, of course, to make my own niche and not get in the queue to occupy somebody else’s. That’s what’s happening starting this week. There’s a page ready for one project, the other will go up next week. I’ll try to not get dispirited when other people share success in spaces where I have failed, and concentrate instead on the moments where I know all that matters is my own progression.

I hope you’ll still accompany me as my poetic existence become wish fulfilment.

[*] Actual advice I was given by someone in a festival environment. You do not have to believe everything that you are told, or indeed act upon it.