One of the hardest things about growing up is having to learn about all the horrible things that happened before you were born: things you couldn’t have done anything about even had you been alive, which you weren’t; and things you may still have to clean up after.
One of the more depressing things I had to find out about when I “grew up” into poetry was the fabled Poetry Wars of the 1970s at the Poetry Society in London. I’ve tried to read Peter Barry’s book, Poetry Wars, which so many people assure me is both gripping and funny, but I failed to find it much more than pointlessly depressing. I might try it again.
So with what heartsinkingness did we awake to the news on May 21st that there is a new spot of bother down the PoSoc; that its director had resigned in what sounded like a pretty spectacular scene in leafy Betterton Street, though we were not to be told precisely how it went. The rumour mill was up to full capacity in no time, churning out details ever more alarming, whether true or untrue.
It was the stuff of situation comedy, or else a reality TV show. The director was followed in short succession by the financial officer, the education officer and the Society’s president, Jo Shapcott. The remaining staff are not permitted to say anything about what is happening; anecdotal reports that leak out come muffled in anonymity and provisos, and sound very unhappy, not least because the remaining inmates of the PoSoc are being functionally cut off from their peer group. It seems that we are indeed going to have to clean up again after a war which may, after all, like the Second World War, have its roots in the old one. It’s the same old story, after all: Cyril Connolly’s hyenas around a dried-up watering hole, trying to knock each other out of the way, one generation after the next, while what water there is seeps away into the earth…
There are a few facts, but no causal connections between them worth speaking of, without resorting to the anecdote mills – and it’s becoming hard to keep straight what you’re “supposed” to “know” and what you’re not. Let’s try:
The Poetry Society board had taken to holding meetings without informing or inviting the director… The editor of Poetry Review had requested to work directly to the board, and bypass the director. The board had agreed to this. (!) The editor of Poetry Review had taken legal steps to have her 3-year extended contract made permanent, and the membership were not informed of this change. There were personality clashes. There were procedural clashes. There is a newly approved Arts Council award which must be administered somehow. (Members do not seem to know what it is for.) There are debates around the mission of the PoSoc and how the money should be spent. How the magazine should be edited. How the membership should be treated. What the Poetry Society is for. Who the Poetry Society is for.
So debates are now raging like forest fires all over Poetry World. Amid them, camps are being struck, sides taken, lines drawn, enemies sworn – by the hardy few, and by Anonymous. Everyone remembers last time; no one wants to be the one standing when the music stops.
However, the Poetry Society is a publicly funded body, and also a members’ organisation. We are in a period of austerity and unprecedented cuts; public funds are more jealously guarded, regarded, rearguarded, now than in the 70s. And cash-strapped or precariously employed members are loath to see their money put to they wot not what use. Also, they like having a Poetry Society, and maybe they wish they had a bit more chance to be part of it.
Communication from the Poetry Society itself has amounted to one web page update, posted three weeks after the story broke, which said (over and over) “business as usual” (with a note at the end saying the president had resigned). As a person who has presided over corporate communications in times of much bigger crisis than this (by which I mean, likely to cause actual hardship to people) I’m not finding it a very impressive example of transparency – or indeed crisis management.
Such a statement clearly isn’t enough to give members that sense of security and reassurance you want when someone has a direct debit set up on your bank account.
With all this going on, and frankly without even any need to resort to all the personality-cult, power-cabal, coterie-mongering that’s been going round, there is every reason for members to call for an Extraordinary General Meeting, and ask the board to explain the situation.
That it has taken so long for this to happen can be summed up by an excellent note a fellow poet wrote on Facebook this morning (it’s also on a public message board, but I’m not using the poet’s name as s/he has decided to retire from the debate in public, due to being cited by one of the principles in an ancillary matter):
This situation has caused a big division among poets and, given the inevitable lack of clarity about what has occurred and what has caused it, many poets are undecided or unsure about whether to position themselves on either side of the argument. Many poets, poetry editors and arts administrators have expressed concern about the situation but, given the probability that other prominent poets, editors etc take an opposing view and feel the PS needs to change its working methods and aesthetics, people are wary about their names appearing on one team list in a tug of war.
Imagine you are a publisher or a poet who publicly declares on one side of the debate – would you not fear yourself or your writers being blackballed when one side prospers? Not just within the PS or PR, but in a wider sense – there are all too many precedents of rifts like this one – lesser ones most of them – having lasting effects on individuals, organisations and publishers with regard to funding, reviews, inclusion, awards and other aspects of our community.
So, inevitably, it has taken someone whose head is already above the parapet – Kate Clanchy, who organised a couple of famous multi-signatory letters to Poetry Review a couple of years ago, strongly criticising its reviewing practices – to start the call for petition signatures. (This is not the time or the place to reopen the debate about the two letters, by the way – I bring them up only to demonstrate that, cf. above, it took someone who had already burned their bridges to open the campaign.) The meeting will only be called if more than 10% of PoSoc members ask for it.
Email kateclanchy at gmail dot com to add your name to the petition.
Kate writes:
The petition will be a very simple one, I think. Something like:
We the undersigned, being 10% of the Membership of the Poetry Society, call on the Board to hold an Extraordinary General Meeting in order to discuss the recent resignations of the President, Director and Finance Officer of the Society.
No one needs to declare personal reasons for signing, or go into the details of the whole gruesome affaire, or agree with me on other issues : all they need do is agree that we have not been given enough information about important issues in a Society of which they are a member.
People are expressing a lot of anxiety about ‘blacklisting’ and ‘flak’: please re-assure everyone that I’ll just collect the names and put them forward when we have 340. I won’t expose anyone’s name or share contacts, either.
Why am I doing this? I just thought someone ought. I don’t have any extra secret info, and I’ve pasted my sole beef with the PS up on Carrie Etter’s blog [n.b., now deleted; it is the two letters as I’ve stated] so it is in the public domain and everyone knows about it. I may well not be the best person, especially as I am very afraid of facebook, blogs and anonymous stuff, and muddly at the best of times. I’m very willing to pass on the burden at any time.
And why am I writing this? you might well ask. I’ve kept my head down so far. I’m not keen on confrontation, I prefer to find things funny, and I can usually see the other guy’s side of the story. But I do feel strongly about fair play and plain dealing. And also about organisational culture – in any organisation – and how people are treated in the workplace. These ideas are massively reinforced by the Nolan Committee’s principles of public service, which I feel apply in this case, due to the funding structure and declared mission of the Poetry Society which is (now I come to type it here, I realise, a little light on particulars): “to advance the study, use and enjoyment of poetry.”
This blog post is not intended as a massive call to arms; I haven’t got it in for anyone, much good would it do me if I had. It’s an explicit, I hope, plea precisely to take the personalities out of it and deal with the issues that need addressing; they’re all fairly close to the surface, after all. People are concerned. Lots of people have been asking what’s going on, and I hope this blog post gathers that up to a certain extent. Carrie Etter has taken her post down, which said nothing but allowed a space for debate (and what a debate!), for the reasons above. I don’t want any of that here, either; I just hope you, whichever bit of the fence you sit on, near, beside or under, will email Kate Clanchy so we can all talk.
kateclanchy at gmail dot com.
See you round the watering hole at the meeting.
Baroque in Hackney 