NORMAL TOWN POET
I contain multitudes’ B.Dylan The multiverse is according to wikipedia the hypothetical collection of all possible universes, which together contain everything that exists. The Multiverse is also a good nomenclature for the state of British poetry now. It is a poetry world increasingly ring-fenced and siloed by vested interests,multiple cliques and what are basically book-reading…
Ever felt down in the dumps? That the world not recognising your talents..that fame will always elude you? Fear not Mark Z and crew have the perfect solutionJUST ASK META!You will be surprised what comes back…. Shaun Belcher Poet? Shaun Belcher is indeed a poet, but I couldn’t find much information about him. Can you…
Shaun Belcher gives some excellent advice on how not to start a poetry career. July 1991I had just completed an interesting but fruitless temporary post at The Poetry Library on the South Bank through 1990 and had my poems and songs illustrated by my sadly deceased friend Laura Stenhouse at St. Martin’s College of Art…
THE GREENWASH RECYCLE Starts in a marketing agency hand-out around the milleniumSocial demarcation and quantifying statistics showed newer markets More social class segmentation and new science of social media metricsIdentified new opportunities to market directly to the A B and C groups Especially those spending more time at home, the newly affluent mothersWork from homers…
Over the last six months I have wasted time on submitting to a list of poetry magazines. When I began my career (in brackets like above) there was no choice. Pre internet the only viable visibility for a poet was through the list of poetry journals which I had to photocopy as a minion at…
Poems written in London and Oxfordshire. Published in early 1990s in Last Gasp pamphlets. Last Gasp was a poetry open mic I helped run with poets Giles Goodland and Bridget Kursheed in Oxford. From 1986 I was heavily influenced by Raymond Carver and especially his book FIRES. Indeed I attended his memorial readings event in…
POETRY FLIES I came from Oxford I didn’t go to OxfordI visited Cambridge once I didn’t go to CambridgeI do not have a nice tidy clique to accept my poetryEven when I write nothing for thirty years I didn’t keep writing when I should haveI didn’t stack chairs for the powers that beOr fawn over…
wrote this many moons ago nothing changedthe description of Les Murray reading at the end is true POETRY IN ENGLAND There is something about poetry in EnglandThat is awfully nay terribly Middle ClassSomething not quite right in the hands of a workerSibilants dribbling like snot from the poor man’s nose Wiping its sleeve on the…
I recently posted a Ted Gioia substack repost of a Elle Griffin report on Major Publishing traits none of it good…’nobody buys books’ … https://www.elysian.press/p/no-one-buys-books Before long nobody will even print them especially in poetry. For the paper poetry magazine the writing been on the wall for a while see my response to Wendy Pratt…