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So Adelaide’s Writers’ Week has been and gone but not without plenty of book-buying, meeting poets and attending the odd session here and there. The first was ‘Searching for Sylvia Plath’ facilitated by the fabulous Felicity Plunkett.
With around 10 biographies about Plath already, why do we need another? Well at a 1,000 pages, this appears to be the definitive one. Written by Heather Clarke over 12 years, Red Comet covers every aspect of Plath’s life, from when she began writing her first poems at 5, through repeated medical trauma and self-medication to her somewhat fraught relationship with Ted Hughes, its a culmination of endless hours in the Plath archives trawling through her journals, letters and photographs. It’s only since her untimely death that Plath has been recognised for the trailblazer she was, a professional writer with a strong work ethic who immersed herself in a world of words, including these rather profound ones when feeding back on the work of her mother’s friend:
Let the wind blow in more roughly.
The next session I went to was ‘Poetry in the Age of Absolutely Everything’ with UK Poet Laureate Simon Armitage, again in conversation with Felicity.
Appointed in May 2019, Simon talked about how the role of Poet Laureate changed after the death of Ted Hughes to more of a working role spanning 10 years rather than a lifetime, establishing the Laurel Prize for eco and nature writing during his. Simon shared entertaining stories from his 256 mile Walking Home project in 2010, which involved walking the Pennines the wrong way giving readings and surviving on whatever was given by his audience, as well as some of the poems he wrote, often with rhyme and rhythm synonymous with a purposeful trek. Simon also held the Oxford Professor of Poetry for four years, publishing a collection of essays during his time to explore how this form takes new directions down old roads, with some debating:
poetry’s constant anxiety about its own existence.
In between these sessions, I joined award-winning author Ellen van Neerven‘s ‘Desire in Poetry’ Masterclass, which examined the different ways this can be expressed through example poems, insightful discussion and a series of writing prompts. And of course, Writers’ Week isn’t complete without a visit to the book tent where I bought a few somethings to keep me going.
Apart from reading, and reading widely, another good tip for a poet is to subscribe to some poetry journals and writing magazines, to also help keep them appraised of the latest events in the literary world. I currently subscribe to seven publications, a mixture of pure poetry, book reviews and general writing, one of which is Mslexia.
This magazine, published out of Newcastle upon Tyne in the UK, prides itself on being an ambassador for women’s writing, to get their voices heard in what can still be construed as a rather male-dominated field. An interesting article in the current issue focuses on ‘bestselling poets’, with only three in the top ten prime sellers actually being alive at the moment.
Not surprisingly Carol Ann Duffy tops the charts, with an increase in her sales income on last year by just under £20,000 to £195,992. I love Duffy’s work, the rawness and reality of it, two of my favourite pieces being from her collection of Love Poems, ‘Drunk’ and ‘Valentine’, in which she picks you up and makes you ‘be’ in the scene with her.
There’s an even split in the top ten in respect of gender, which includes the likes of Heaney, Plath and Armitage, and the piece reminds us that the poet’s income is a mere ‘pittance’ compared to the bestsellers in other genres, giving the example of historical fiction queen Philippa Gregory who earned close to £1 million this year.
And so it ends with the advice of don’t give up the day job, which is all too true. I have been lucky enough financially to be able to reduce my working hours for the first time in my life to focus purely on my poetry but yes, poets face an interesting challenge – to dream in a realist world.
J V Birch 