There was a lot to choose from Friday night in London, if you are a writer and/or reader of poetry.  One of the wonders and surprises of London’s arts scene is the very large role that poetry plays in it. On any given night you can find a reading, an open mic, a performance, a workshop. And so you have to ask, if poetry is dying in our society and not worth the cost of life support, then who are all these people and what are they doing with their time when they could be at home watching the public get bamboozled on The X Factor ( but that’s a separate issue)?

On Friday night I chose to be one of about 300 (I’m guessing) at a reading in support of PBS, The Poetry Book Society, which was founded in 1953 by TS Eliot as a sort of poetry book club, and which has been going strong ever since until the Arts Council decided to cut its funding. Our Poet Laureate, Carol Ann Duffy, put together a Who’s Who of an evening, half funeral half celebration, and I decided to spend my Friday evening there for several reasons, not all  having to do with anger against the government. There have been many blogs and articles in the paper expressing outrage at how the government is cutting the legs out form under Britain’s poetry scene. PBS is just one victim. There are many others, including poetry festivals like Aldeburgh and poetry publishers like Salt, Enitharmon and Flambard. There have also been people writing the other side of the story, such as poet Todd Swift whose excellent blog Eyewear points out that perhaps we shouldn’t complain about poetry cuts until we have found the money to fully fund universities and the NHS. To me, both points of view have their merit. Plus, I am also enough involved with Britain’s theatre scene to realize that our sinking ship is quite large and full of drowning people. The theatre world has certainly suffered just as much under the government’s heavy axe as the literary one. 

To be honest, I have always been very wary of the arts relying too heavily on government support. Yes, it is nice when the cheque arrives and it is solely for the purpose that you want it to be. But as they say back home, there’s no such thing as a free lunch, and I have always been suspicious enough of politicians and their motivations not to want to get too comfy with them. I certainly would never want to have any organization that I care about depend so exclusively on government aid that it might sink without it. I would never want any government to be looking that closely at what art I produce and how I produce it. Nothing but trouble can come of that, just as the photographer Robert Mapplethorpe discovered in the US in 1990 when the National Endowment for the Arts withdrew support from his exhibit because they didn’t like his images. And so we are seeing it here in Britain now. The verbiage may be different, but the effect is the same.

So why did I go to Friday evening’s event? Several reasons. One, I like a good show and this was certainly going to be one. Two, because a friend of mine quipped, when she read that the evening would showcase 30 of our most famous poets, “Do we have 30 famous poets?” I wanted to see who was on the list and assure myself that a list did exist – whether I agreed with its contents or not. But more than that, I went because I am a poet, a British poet, and I wanted to see for myself how many of us were there, how many of us (understanding of course that this was only out of the London population of poets and people have busy lives and other time commitments) actually care enough to show up. If we don’t show up and speak out and make our opinions heard outside beyond the comfort of our own little offices and writing nooks, then how can we ask anyone else to care? So I went because I believe in the importance of poetry to our culture. I may not believe that we deserve funding any more than any of the other squillion institutions who have also been cut. But I believe that as poets we need to use our voices to remind the greater population that we are still here, working away, exposing our hearts through language, and that we are necessary, whether some politician reads our work or not. Poetry matters. Poetry is one of the few things in this life that really is priceless.