Over the past 15 years, I have been invited to speak to students all across the nation and the one question that keeps cropping up, without exception, is “What advice would you give to those of us who want to be writers?” Students from high school to college to university all seem to want to know what key will open the door for them. My unequivocal answer has always been: Read more; read everything. Take your writing practice seriously.
In an ideal and just world this would be enough. But since we do not live in such a utopia, I would like to add:
Be strategic.
Network.
Know the right people.
Control the media.
This is particularly vital for poets, the most neglected of writers. In Canada and perhaps elsewhere, there is a dirty war being waged by certain poets and schools of poetry for control of the direction of the art, the aesthetic dominance. They tend to be “exclusivists” who want to be in charge of who is in or out of anthologies, on or off the festival circuit, and who is shortlisted or short-shrifted for the major awards.
So, how do these poets do it? How do they come to monopolize the poetic terrain?
They begin by lining their ducks up early – working to create a buzz around their name and their product. If this sounds crass and calculated – it is. It is all about marking their territory, making it publicly and permanently known that their idol, so-and-so, deems them worthy of the title “poet.” They make no bones about name-dropping, exposing the relationship they have with their mentors, shamelessly addressing a poem to them.
The correct term is networking, cultivating friendships with those perceived to be the “right” people, career-builders, those with a “senior” reputation; those either connected to the academic world or those spouting the latest, hippest trend in poetics. Either way, the “new kid on the block” becomes a staunch advocate of the orthodoxy s/he has chosen to embrace and of the poets with whom he or she has aligned him/herself. Together, they adopt an unspoken rule of thumb: I’ll be your go-fer and admirer, and your enemy will become my enemy. You will be my key, my door opener. Later on, when the apprentice moves up the food-chain, the motto becomes a little more pragmatic: You scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours, and, of course, its necessary corollary: You watch my back, I’ll watch yours.
Note: These bards, usually of the ring-wing neo-formalist ilk (but not necessarily, for it also exists at the other end of the spectrum) are fanatically devoted to their masters and can be quite rabid at times. Fiercely protective of their territory, they cordon off what’s “theirs” and restrict access to those perceived to be bad for the gene pool, usually the subversive proponents of anything they are against. They take the position that their dogma is the one True religion and that all non-believers are heretics and should burn in avant-garde hell.
Mentors, in key positions of power, strategically move their protégés into editorial positions in exchange for services rendered. In the best-case scenario, the “rising stars” are dangled the editorship of an important literary magazine (usually Toronto-based) where they can sharpen their critical acumen, positively reviewing those with like-minded poetics including the mentors who put them there in the first place. Imbued with a sense of power, they take a provocative stance by poking jabs at their aesthetic enemies. They become the self-appointed “gatekeepers”, the stewards of so-called Good Literature. By the time their first manuscript is ready, they have a posse of potential blurb-writers and reviewers waiting to return the favour.
And then it’s all about momentum: The first review leads to the second, and so on.
No one would disagree with the fact that the media is crucial in jumpstarting a poet’s literary career. No reviews, no groundswell. Virtual invisibility. The clever ones, those who have mastered the art of career-building, do more than just covet the pleasure of art for art’s sake. Once they have peopled their world with key contacts and have built up a respectable literary résumé, these new – and now, very biased – poets are poised to edit a “ground-breaking” anthology. It should come as no surprise that the poetry included in such books is not always representative of the best works in circulation because the raison d’être for the project is more about promoting those in their “network” or those who, somewhere down the road, will play an instrumental role in immortalizing their literary career. The selection process involves hard-nosed and cynical calculation: What poet-scholar is most likely to do his PhD on their significant contributions or put them on a course list? What poet might turn up some day on an important jury? The decision of whom to befriend is an exercise in Machiavellian diplomacy.
I have often wondered, for instance, how Jacob Scheier ever felt good about receiving the 2008 Governor General’s Award for Poetry amid all the accusations that things weren’t exactly on the up and up. (The three members of the GG poetry panel included Di Brandt, an old friend of Scheier, who allegedly had some input into the translation of one of the poems in the book, and Pier Giorgio Di Cicco, who wrote a blurb for the back cover.)
Looking at this year’s shortlist and jury for the GGs, one has to wonder who the bookies would give odds-on favourite to win.
Call me naïve, but I prefer a world of poetry without all the machinations. Rilke’s earnest advice to the young Mr. Kappus, who desperately wanted to know how to cultivate his poetic yearning, still touches me profoundly. He, of course, advised him that it is about process and personal fulfillment. It is about the rewards of deeply feeling the experience of life.
Perhaps it would be best not to dwell on the fact that poetry has a rat race all its own, and that the alliances forged and the behind-the-scenes wheeling and dealing are no different from the boardroom politics of any cutthroat operation. The problem is that such conduct has begun to dominate and contaminate the literary landscape.
