What does it mean, the fact that I am self-employed but voluntary (ie I am making no money whatsoever out of this). What does it mean that the whole of the small poetry world orbits tied to a shoestring  and it’s almost impossible to make a decent living out of it?

 

Don’t misunderstand me; this is not a complaint on my own behalf - but partly on behalf of others. Chris Hamilton Emery, who is the main man at Salt Publishing - and a champion of the art - keeps us abreast of what’s going on in his world mostly via postings on Facebook and it doesn’t look good. I’m glad he’s there to tell us who difficult it really is. We need to know. He’s in it for love, as most of us are, but he has to balance the books and put food on the table.

 

This can’t be right! Surely poetry is worth something. It contributes to the psychic economy of the world, doesn’t it? The organiser of the Forward poetry prize said at a discussion at Ledbury that it’s good for poets to be hungry. WHY? Do we write better poems with an empty belly? I think that’s a myth, and keeps us in all in our places, not expecting that we are worth financial remuneration. The elderly and exceptional poet Samuel Menashe - recently awarded a ‘neglected masters’ award  has lived in the same apartment in Manhattan five floors up for the last fifty or so years. The bath is still in the kitchen! He exists on a minute income. This is surely not how things should be.

 

I’m not saying poets should be paid a million pounds a year, or publishers should be rolling in gold, I’m just saying that a living wage never did anyone any harm.

 

And while I’ve been writing this, I’ve changed my mind. This is a complaint. Those of us who keep this little poetry planet spinning deserve to be paid. I’m lucky enough to live with a real wage-earner, but my kids get less of me because of those books I have to balance and poems to write.

 

Money matters. Even to poets.

 

Just a thought.