The Selling and Self-Regulation of Contemporary Poetry

J.T. Welsch

Description

A book-length study of the contemporary poetry industry

The Selling and Self-Regulation of Contemporary Poetry is the first book-length study of the contemporary poetry industry. By documenting radical changes over the past decade in the way poems are published, sold, and consumed, it connects the seemingly small world of poetry with the other, wider creative industries. In reassessing an art form that has been traditionally seen as free from or even resistant to material concerns, the book confronts the real pressures – and real opportunities – faced by poets and publishers in the wake of economic and cultural shifts since 2008. The changing role of anthologies, prizes, and publishers are considered alongside new technologies, new arts policy, and re-conceptions of poetic labour.

The historical frame helps to understand the legacy of increased funding in the UK in the previous decade, which Tony Blair described as a ‘golden age’ for the arts two months before his resignation, and a year before the global financial crisis which succeeding governments used to justify major funding cuts. With this economic emphasis, the book challenges the historical perception of poetry’s market autonomy, for a period in which it has moved beyond Pierre Bourdieu’s view of it as ‘the disinterested activity par excellence’. Drawing on an emerging body of research into the newly defined creative economy, alongside materialist and sociological approaches, the book is structured around a range of case studies – from new publishing formats, new degree programmes and mentorship schemes, plagiarism scandals, to poems going ‘viral’ – emphasizing an underlying shift towards professionalisation and entrepreneurial rhetoric associated with new poetry. Ultimately, it argues that poetry’s continued growth and diversification also leaves individuals with more responsibility than ever for sustaining its communities.

Introduction – An Essential Industry: PoBiz in the New Millennium; Part I: New Markets; 1. The Generation Game: Anthologising the New Consensus; 2. Shortlisted Against My Ruins: Scandals in the New Prize Culture; 3. Poetry as Content: The Network Value of Lyrical Thought; Part II: New Products; 4. Full-Length: The Rise & Reification of the Modern Poetry Collection; 5. Poetic Devices: Book Technologies of a Retro-Future; 6. The Big Debut; Part III: New Policy; 7. Creative Capital: The Consolidation of London’s Poetry Power; 8. Plagiarism Police and the Re-Conception of Originality; 9. Practice-Based Priorities: Studying Poetry Across the Creative-Critical Divide; Part IV: New Producers; 10. Poetry & Work: Some Thoughts on Paterson; 11. Delighted & Humbled: The Poet as Entrepreneur; 12. The Promise of Professionalism; Conclusion – The Poetry Game: Markets & Metrics of Anxiety; Index.

Sujets

• Publishing
• Literary criticism

Informations

• Publié par: Anthem Press
• Date de parution: 31 mars 2020
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781785273377
• Langue: English

Extrait

The Selling and Self-Regulation of Contemporary Poetry
The Selling and Self-Regulation of Contemporary Poetry
J. T. Welsch
Anthem Press
An imprint of Wimbledon Publishing Company
www.anthempress.com
This edition first published in UK and USA 2020
by ANTHEM PRESS
75–76 Blackfriars Road, London SE1 8HA, UK
or PO Box 9779, London SW19 7ZG, UK
and
244 Madison Ave #116, New York, NY 10016, USA
Copyright © J. T. Welsch 2020
The author asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN-13: 978-1-78527-335-3 (Hbk)
ISBN-10: 1-78527-335-3 (Hbk)
This title is also available as an e-book.
Cover photo by Ed Centeno, used with permission.
CONTENTS
Acknowledgements
Introduction: Poetry and the New Creative Industries
Part I New Markets
1. The Generation Game: Anthologising the New Consensus
2. Shortlisted Against My Ruins: The Economy of Scandal in the New Prize Culture
3. Poetry as Content: The Network Value of Lyrical Thought
Part II New Products
4. Full-Length: The Invention of the Modern Poetry Collection
5. Poetic Devices: Technologies of a Retro-Future
6. Debut Fever
Part III New Policy
7. Creative Capitals: The Place of Cities in Global Poetry Networks
8. Fake Muse: Plagiarism, Conceptual Writing, and Other Sins of Authenticity
9. All Our Exploring: Poetry’s Critical Turn
Part IV New Producers
10. Poetry and Work: Some Thoughts on Paterson
11. The Poet as Entrepreneur
12. The Promise of Professionalism
Afterword: The Poetry Game
Index
Acknowledgements
This book wouldn’t have existed without the support of Katherine Ebury. Aside from the model of fastidiousness and social bearing in her own research, she has brought a sense of perspective to more breakdowns and middle-of-the-night deliberation than anyone deserves. John McAuliffe has been another guiding spirit, going well beyond the duties of a PhD supervisor since I finished 10 years ago. Colleagues at the University of York have provided invaluable advice and mentorship, both on the writing process and specific drafts, especially Matthew Campbell, Helen Smith, Hugh Haughton, Alexandra Kingston-Reese, Emilie Morin, David Atwell, Adam Kelly, Bryan Radley, Michael McCluskey, Erica Sheen, Cathy Moore, Nick Gill, Sam Buchan-Watts, Emily Roach, and all of the students on my ‘industry’ modules over the years. Beyond personal support, this manuscript would not have been finished without research leave from the York’s Department of English and Related Literature in 2018–19. I’m also endlessly grateful to everyone at Anthem Press and the reviewers of this manuscript for their emboldening feedback.
Other friends have been similarly indulgent of my bringing so many conversations back to creative industries themes, including James Fraser, Sam Reese, Iain Bailey, Rebecca Pohl, and Andrew Frayn. Every chapter here is profoundly indebted to exchanges with poets and publishers over the past decade. Whether or not they are conscious of specific contributions, it is impossible to imagine this book without the input and encouragement of Rachael Allen, Paul Batchelor, Stephanie Burt, Anthony Caleshu, Kimberly Campanello, Matthew Cheeseman, Tom Chivers, John Clegg, Joey Connolly, Stephen Connolly, Abi Curtis, Nia Davies, Kit Fan, Michael Farrell, Steven Fowler, Nathan Hamilton, Jeff Hilson, Nasser Hussain, Kirsten Irving, Evan Jones, Luke Kennard, Caleb Klaces, Ágnes Lehóczky, Melissa Lee-Houghton, Frances Leviston, Kathryn Maris, Will May, Adam Piette, Deryn Rees-Jones, Ruby Robinson, Andy Spragg, Jon Stone, Claire Trévien, David Wheatley, Jane Yeh, and many others.
Gratitude is also due to editors and publications where material for this book previously appeared. A version of the first part of the first chapter was published in B O D Y as ‘Generationalism in British Poetry’ in 2014. A version of Chapter 3 will be included in a forthcoming volume on poetry and the essay from the University of Victoria Wellington, following a conference there on the topic in 2017. Chapter 10 was commissioned by Gregory McCartney at The Honest Ulsterman , where a version of it was published in 2017. The final chapter was commissioned by Emily Berry for Poetry Review , where a version of it was published in Autumn 2018. Other chapters began life as conference papers at the universities of Bolton, Dundee, East Anglia, Goldsmiths, Manchester, Plymouth, and the Institute for English Studies, London.
In keeping with the arguments that follow, I have no doubt of the role these support networks, structures, and privileges have played in the production of this book. Among them, Katherine and my parents, siblings, and other family have had an influence beyond measure. Lovely Sasha, in particular, has been the most steadfast writing companion anyone could ask for.
Introduction
POETRY AND THE NEW CREATIVE INDUSTRIES
Beyond the Golden Age
2007 seems a simpler time in hindsight. The Global Financial Crisis seems to mark a clear turn, whether it began that summer or at any number of earlier signs ignored. In the long tail of the Great Recession and political fallout that continues more than a decade later, the effects are still being tallied and felt. In popular dramatisations and documentaries, there is a predictable focus on the big-shorting wolves of Wall Street, with less scope for wider, more complicated cultural shifts. In these retellings, the dot-com bubble around the millennium’s turn was followed by a sunny period of growth, ostensibly regaining the stability of the 1990s, while actually feeding a new frenzy of speculation around sub-prime mortgages. In August 2007, a run on the UK bank Northern Rock and the lowering of the US Federal Reserve interest rate, which had been rising since 2003, were the first harbingers for those of us outside trading circles of the worldwide economic crisis to come.
In the story of the Great Recession, the fate of arts funding is often overshadowed by more urgent crises in social services, healthcare, and other support structures. When it is discussed, there is often a sense of cultural production at the mercy of global finances. In March 2007, UK prime minister Tony Blair delivered a speech in the Turbine Hall of London’s Tate Modern, suggesting that ‘the last ten years’ might be seen as a ‘golden age’ for the arts, thanks to his government’s cultural investments. With prophetic irony, he addressed concerns by those who might be ‘nervous that the golden era may be about to end’, amid worries about an upcoming spending review or the cost of civic projects like the 2012 London Olympics. ‘All of us in government take great pride in what has been achieved this past decade’, he assured the artists, patrons, and journalists present. ‘We have avoided boom and bust in the economy. We don’t intend to resume it in arts and culture.’ 1
Two months later, Blair announced his resignation, precipitating a period of national turmoil that continues in the Brexit crisis. By comparison, the effect on arts investment was swift and profound. In December that year, before the depths of the global situation were clear, nearly two hundred arts organisations in the United Kingdom were told they would lose their funding, in what the Guardian reported as the ‘most bloody cull since the Arts Council was set up more than 50 years ago’. 2 After further spending reviews when the Conservative-led coalition took power in 2010, Art Council England’s budget was slashed by another 30 per cent, with additional reductions throughout the next decade. Similar cuts followed a bailout of banks in Ireland, where the Irish Writers’ Centre lost its funding as part of a €9 million reduction to Arts Council Ireland’s budget. In the United States, where private contributions are the primary source of arts funding and where public funding had been on decline since 2001, the end result was the same. As a 2018 report produced by Grantmakers in the Arts explains, ‘Private contributions for the arts appear to be more sensitive to the effects of economic downturns than is true for private contributions overall.’ 3 Its figures show an overall decline of 20 per cent in US arts funding for 2008, including a disproportionate decrease in philanthropic support. Foundations and sponsors also made significant reductions, with funding for the arts decreasing disproportionately within overall grant budgets. The impact on writers was fairly direct, with the UK Authors’ Licencing and Collection Society (ALCS) reporting that the percentage of authors who earn a full-time living from writing had fallen from 40 per cent in 2005 to 11.5 per cent by 2013. Wherever arts funding had come from before, despite Blair’s assurances, the golden age was over.
This book considers the repercussions for poetry in the decade after 2008. From the start, however, I want to highlight the broader forces behind the shifts it examines. In the first instance, it is essential that the story be exp