On the Forward Prize for Poetry

Tom Chivers:

But what is increasingly apparent is that British poets in their 20s and 30s (Kennard, Challenger, Rees and Nagra, for instance) are under far less pressure to write from within a grouping. Influences are more various, more contradictory; creating a poetry that is experimental but not deliberately obscure, that works with and without form, a poetry that ‘[wobbles] on the balance beam between associative and dissociative … absurdist and cerebral’ (TonyHoagland). Now that’s exciting.

Read the rest.

Comments

[Sean Bonney]

This is the language of Blairite advertising.

I'd be very interested if someone could tell me in what way any of the poets Chivers mentions can be called 'experimental', unless that word is now to be taken to mean 'glanced at Frank O'Hara's Selected Poems, once, while having a glass of milk'. It reminds me of those god-awful corporate dance albums you used to be able to get in the 90s, that called themselves 'the sound of the underground'.

Its funny how Chivers likes to pretend the split between middle-of-the-road poetry and more interesting stuff is a thing of the past. If he really thought that he wouldn't have to load his prose with implicit put-downs like 'deliberately obscure' - the poets I value, when they are obscure at all, are so because its necessary for what they're trying to say.

Its baffling: why can't Chivers be honest with his terms, and admit that the poets he favours are firmly in the middle-ground, the poetic equivalent of Coldplay. After all, thats fine if you like that sort of thing. Or maybe he realises that 'safe', 'bland', 'conformist' are not useful terms for someone who's more interested in selling than writing.