SHAUN BELCHER

WICKERLAND? It’s like MOTHERLAND but without the humour..more AMANDA writes poetry…..god help us all. The above states

chance to talk about real things like connection, love ,loss, creativity, purpose….

thats so nice not fake things like Iran, Gaza, Ukraine…
at least it makes Class War seem so less futile..

IF THIS IS POETRY then POETRY IS OVER….dead, a Norwegian Blue, nailed to its Class based perch. I embarrassed to use the word any more in fact I hate POETRY and POETS as presently configured in the UK.

You know those so-called poetry geniuses clogging up the presses with their creative writing group white middle class drivel…..

There are hundreds if not thousands of people out there now calling themselves poets and entering endless stupid competitions and helping each other feel ‘better’. It is internet driven creating delusional poets and a lot of spurious nepotism disguised as networking. Poetry in the UK is a fraud.

In my honest opinion at best this is simply therapy not poetry ( typical career paths include ex hypnotherapists/ acupuncture/wellbeing/physiotherapyetc oh and made a pile in the City bankers and wives of bankers loom large) so they really have time on hands..none ever seem to have been in anything but comfortable white middle class environments.

This stuff makes me want to burn their publications if not actually the poets (don’t push me on that it negotiable) slowly in a bonfire of their own self-regarding writing..maybe a giant Wicker Poet..that would do nicely.

The present queen of this post millenium touchy-feely drivel is the recent winner of the National Poetry Competition which a flag-bearer for more of the same. Although what Nation’s flag she flys under dubious..Offshore banking maybe.

A poem about missing an affluent middle-class son who has a top job in Australia ( the author has a background in working at the Bank of England).
In a world where reality is increasingly bloody and desperate we get this genre-defining slice of interiority that avoids all aspects of reality apart from those impinging on the author’s sensitive soul. This is what poetry post millenium is all about. She is not the worst she can at least write but it not the work that the problem its the vested interests making this happen.

She represents the triumph of the establishment. The establishment Poetry Society doing its avowed job of rewarding somebody who so establishment it painful. Don’t expect comments on Gaza or the homeless it just isn’t fit for purpose darling in the poetry and book clubs across the shires they want world view views which shore up their sense of security not question it.

Her friends placed her BS book in front of Philip Larkin in Waterstones and shared on X that bastion of liberal views. A stunning example of posh lady Boadiceas ( there actually a luxury perfume called that seriously one cannot make it up) challenging the patriarchal norms as they trod carefully around the homeless on the way out of the bookshop….reverse the situation and imagine the shitstorm a male poet doing that to a female poet would engender. Sadly no male poet called Plath around to test the water maybe there a Moore, Dickinson or Shapcott though…it a sign of the arrogance and untouchability of a certain strata of post-feminist affluent women that they do this.

Larkin is not unusual at all in fact a certain level of financial stability is essential to their dominance. NO poor female or male poets make the grade these days as you need time (lots of it) and money (lots of that too).

A feted poet from Oxford lives in a million pound house travels to at least three Spa/Writing retreats a year and wins awards for ‘interviewing’ dementia patients whilst underpaid staff clear up the urine. Nice one must need the sea air after that tortuous supplement to your high end earners lifestyle.

Finally and not least Kit De Waal a warrior queen of new feminist poetry and a shining example of Working Class made good (genuine hard back story) but after marrying the barrister brother of Booker prize winner Edmund De Waal it all got a tad easier. That’s the reality of modern British Publishing it CLASS based and increasingly devoid of talent and genuine innovation.

Bookseller campaigns to increase visibility of Working Class writers are just that a tokenism to obscure the increasingly Class based control of publishing. Ironically Kit De Waal offering a Bridport Prize in Bookseller for older poets. etc more tokenism of course.

Bookseller tokenism classic is the Working Class Nature Writers award..

Lets not unpack that for what it is..oh ok then it is total bullshit simply take two boxes combine and tick. PR department inventions to boost sales of fairly mediocre talents and get kudos for defending the poor and disadvantaged.

The Bookseller is a driver of all that face-on shit you see in Waterstones you know the umpteenth copy of the plot and sleeve art of The Essex Serpent – they marketeers of dross. They know how to shift shit printed in China like nobody else…Rowling is their Queen. Nobody can invent new income streams quite like her.

LEGACY: death of innovation and a lost generation

There are now few new kids from working class backgrounds in the media, theatre, music world becuase it ring-fenced by the ability (TIME IS MONEY)
to do it.

Mercury Prize Nominees – ALL public school last year.

Two of our finest female new poets

Hollie McNish – feigns humble ordinary gal did Classics at Cambridge father owns a Reading IT company is director.

Kae Tempest – father one of world’s top music lawyers…must have made the transformation from mediocre poet to music artist that much harder..

Two Poetry Review fave new poets have a background in PR…along with the wellbeing route this high on poets transforming their careers list. Editing others poetry a money-spinner alongside a nous built in years massaging social media accounts for Google and Nike..you go find the poets it not hard.

This list isn’t gender specific nor sexist it is CLASS specific. I sure there are male equivalents it just hard to find them although a few spring to mind. It is predominantly female because they have the lions share of success recently. This is because of the glass ceiling being not just shattered but then turned round and armour-plated. If you can add some diversity points or a tragic back story you in the money.

It harder to track male stories maybe because they not so keen to share their privileged upbringings whilst female poets appear to feel protected by their gender and generally share more.

This is the end of poetry as I knew it which in the late 1970s was predominantly male almost overwhelmingly so. The pendulum has swung very hard the other way now.and the birth of poetry as lifestyle choice is connected to this it is as simple as that.

A nice award bauble to add to Chanel perfume on dresser and a Tesla in the drive. Oh darling you won a competition most poets cannot afford to enter how marvellous. Lets have a dinner party soon.

As Nick Moss writes..

Their poetry is rooted in an attempt to maintain as essential to poetry that sensibility of interiority which is the core of the novel in its original form. Croft describes this as “the commodification of poetry, the privatisation of feeling.” Not every poem needs to be about a fucking geranium. Not when some people don’t have patios to decorate, because they don’t have homes at all…

https://www.culturematters.org.uk/no-them-only-us-review-of-the-privatisation-of-poetry-by-andy-croft-broken-sleep-books-2024/

None of it addresses the personal through oblique and politicised analysis but always through personalised tear-stained-contact lenses..

The latest fad write it and read it off your phone after all it is throw-away…social media led drivel..it doesn’t matter.

Have an issue lets talk about it, workshop it, send it to a press/ magazine that likes it and bingo..on we go…a carousel of poetry that makes Sylvia Plath look hard-edged rational…bring back the Confessional Poets at least they had some other things to say.

Here my guide to getting published today:

Write about YOURSELF.
Write about yourself in relation to an issue you may not have been directly affected by say suicide or alcoholism and write about it in relation to yourself.

Write about NATURE not ENVIRONMENTAL CRISIS
Not actual nature as in commercial factory farming more how you like walking around a lake and looking at trees.This category sells well especially if decorated with pretty illustrations. Rabbits and cats best.

SUBMIT TO MAGAZINES RUN BY FRIENDS
Never ever stray away from your support networks it takes time to build up a web of equally vapid boosters who attend your monthly meetings and swoon over every syllable. They quickly become publishers as they move up the greasy pole of Brit Lit. Pay for high end agents they worth their weight in promotional uptick.

PAY TO PLAY
Go top end in Creative Writing Course choice that way you connect higher up the ladder. PAY out money in subscriptions and competition entries. NEVER express a unsuitable opinion especially about politics unless gender related and vague to show you on right side of history. Spend big on small presses and magazines and competitions INVEST in your future.

SELF-PUBLISHING
Never self-publish that s for commoners and such-like. Self-Publishing is akin to total failure. Poetry only really exists through approved channels. Get a Faber abd Faber or Cape badge and you in the green room of poetry and your every missive will be poored over in The Guardian and Times. Eat my shorts darlinks..or drink them in hospitality.

MAGAZINES THE REALITY
Most magazines are almost certainly dominated by the white middle class and may even be edited from a chateaux in France..most are post Oxbridge white middle class really affluent. Keeping control of the message all important not quality. The occaisional brown face helps tick boxes and helps establish a veneer of faux diversity.

BRIT LIT SICK NO CURE?

IF BRITISH POETRY has become a therapy circle for the white middle class is it virtually redundant now? Male female or trans no matter the lack of substantial content outside the domestic is in my honest opinion a total failure of modern poetry.

Whilst the hogweed of self chokes the landscape things like Smokestack folding show how bleak the future really is ….the ‘terroir’ of poetry is increasingly ring-fenced by the poetry of self..they want to erect barriers to reality.

I am against this stuff…give me a match we need new growth.

In the olden days my grandfather would set a match to a straw field after harvest…

The personal is political – poetry used to be political

before politics became dangerous ask Kneecap

Burn Baby Burn

Radiohead – met at Radley Public School….there you go…