I wasn’t thinking about my own poem about identity
when I interviewed Maeve O’Sullivan for the current (Feb,2018) issue of The Honest Ulsterman. It did help to ensure that I read the
December issue #123 of Poetry Ireland
Review, 2017, earlier than I probably would have if I didn’t have a poem
published in it that thereby led to an early copy landing on my doormat. This
ensured I read Eavan Boland’s Preface giving me a context within which to ask
particular questions. http://www.poetryireland.ie/publications/poetry-ireland-review/editorial/issue-123
Inspired by a hissie-fit
reaction to the arrival of my social identity card, needed as a bus pass, my
poem When They Grow Another Me ‘on a petri...’ raises the question, among
others, about what will happen if they lose ‘me’? The questions now appear to have
a parallel in questions being asked about poetry and its authors in a spat, or
spout raised in an essay in PN Review. Thankfully
poetry can’t be grown from DNA and we can’t either clone or own its essence but
that doesn’t mean there won’t be those who will continue to try.
The Blue Nib online literary journal issue launched 20th February, 2018 has an article by Jane Simmons examining the split in the poetry world because, she reports, of a searing essay by Rebecca Watts published in PN Review titled The Cult of the Noble Amateur (see http://www.pnreview.co.uk/cgi-bin/scribe?item_id=10090 ) in which she takes issue with award winning work of poets such as Holly McNish, Kate Tempest and Rupi Kaur. Apparently successful because ‘artless poetry sells’. Both Tempest and McNish have won The Ted Hughes Award for New Work in Poetry, the latter for a work of poetic memoir. ‘From the Judges: Poetry and prose mix well creating an internal rhythm that is conversational and honest'
The critique is apparently as much
because these performance poets received acknowledgement by the UK establishment
as it is about the work itself. McNish’s response is mentioned also. Simmons
invites us to consider our own views.
http://magazine.thebluenib.com/article/poetry-world-split-rebecca-watts-v-hollie-mcnish-jane-simmons-examines-the-split-and-invites-you-to-consider-your-response-to-the-argument/
In the Preface to
the December issue of Poetry Ireland
Review Eavan Boland explores the space between the more private space of
the page poem and the public language of performance. These and other
interweaving languages become the context in which she introduces the work of
Stephen Sexton whose poetry is high-lighted in this Dec issue of PIR and
informed the questions I posed to Maeve O’Sullivan as I interviewed her The Honest Ulsterman (Feb, 2018). O’Sullivan is known for her Haiku and Haibun –
many of which appear in Elsewhere (Alba, 2017), launched by Paula Meehan in Dublin in the late autumn. She is a member of the British Haiku Society, was a founding member of the Irish Haiku Society and is also well-known for being a member of The Poetry Divas known for their spoken word performances – with the slogan’blurring the wobbly boundaries between page and stage’. Who better to ask about her experience of straddling what could be seen as the extremes of these genres? The interview can be accessed here http://humag.co/features/around-the-world-in-poetry-haiku-and- haibun The dispute about terrain may be more interesting because of the questions it raises that go to the heart of what makes a poem poetry - who makes that decision and who owns the rights to a particular language and its identifiers - than because of anything else: questions that ultimately become questions about identity.
