Influence and Genre

The always fascinating SF writer Charles Stross has written a blog post entitled The Death of Genre. Its well worth reading the whole post, but he starts by saying "Science Fiction literature is unusual in that much of the work within the field exists in constant dialog with other works." Unusual, but not unique of course; but what I call the "transmission mechanism" that allows ideas to populate is perhaps more integral to the SF community. Partly this is its future-sense: you want to know where the ideas are coming from, and where they might go to. Partly its the close relationship between SF readers and SF writers. All writers are readers first (at least, all good writers are), but in SF I imagine there's an intensity of the relationship that isn't as obvious in other genres. Hilary Mantel clearly likes history, but whether she likes historical fiction is less obvious - one could even argue that "Wolf Hall" is a refutation of so much of historical fiction's attachment to narrative.

That's an aside. But the SF reader = the SF writer in a way that is unusual in most other genres. The filter for ideas is other science fiction as much (or more) than non-fiction or other genres. Part of that is because it exists as cult as much as genre. But it's a big cult these days; witness film successes such as "Avatar" and the continuing repackaging of "Star Wars." Stross reminds us that "around 30% of the big budget movies to come out of Hollywood each year are recognizably science fiction" but its a particular version of SF, signifiers being aliens; spaceships - and "something is missing upstairs."

For the SF writer/reader doesn't come to it - or never used to come to it - because he or she wants relentless space opera. Its for the ideas, stupid. And here's the interesting thing about Stross's article it's that he explicitly acknowledges the dialogue that happens between SF writers - that they explicitly and implicitly respond artistically (intellectually, if you like) to what others are doing. This is interesting in itself - because I guess many writers in other genres probably curse when an idea they've been playing with gets taken up by someone else. The idea that you don't just respond to another writer because you're looking for a bandwagon to jump on, but because it has opened up an interesting artistic/intellectual pathway is a fascinating one. And of course, there's one other genre where it also takes place: and that is poetry.

But to remain with Stross for a minute; he's asking how e-books are changing things. The argument, I think, is that genre becomes more rather than less  with e-books. Personalisation (whether through Amazon recommends or whatever) narrows rather than expands. The serendipity of the old bookshop is being replaced by an endless market place - where "the infinite bookshelf is already a problem for us." Choice in this sense becomes problematic. "There was so much less SF in the 1970s that it was quite possible for those of us who grew up reading the field back then to acquire a comprehensive coverage of it" concludes Stross and here is the nub of the problem as he perceives it. A genre that has, on the one hand become pretty massive and mainstream; and on the other hand has spawned imitation rather than conversation. In that space, he's arguing the lack of clear curation is going to have a debilitating effect on the future SF writer.

What struck me from reading Stross's piece - and re-reading it today - was that it echoes our field; poetry. Even as recently as 1995 when I had my first poem published in a small magazine it was possible to sit in the Poetry Library on the South Bank and pretty much read every magazine; get a sense of the "scene" from the few anthologies available; and memorise most of the names. There was a loss here as well; the British "scene" had narrowed quite considerably, so that you could read Peter Forbes' "Poetry Review" or your Motion/Morrison Penguin anthology and not even realise there had ever been anything like an avant garde. But still, that aside, by 1997 I'd found room for Les Murray and John Ashbery in my personal canon. It's perhaps no coincidence that 1996 saw the publication of the Sweeney/Shapcott anthology "Emergency Kit" which explicitly states something is wrong in the state of English poetry and looks wider.

The doors have come off since then. The rise of the MA (Poetry) (almost invisible in the late 90s) and a rash of cheap offline and online publications - as well as a revival in interest in new forms; and the continued baptisms of fire that the festival and spoken word scenes provide - has meant that whereas you might survey the scene in the 1990s and keep coming across the same names; get a sense of who was writing what - and have a dialogue with them; it may well be impossible to do that now. Add together the number of poets in Salt's younger poets or Nathan Hamilton's selections for the Rialto and the list of names stretches into the distance. Re-reading the Salt book yesterday, it was "Emergency Kit" that came to mind. These seemed to be poems that responded to that invocation of "poems for strange times." Along with the inevitable introspection and solipsism of young writing, there are myriad worlds of influence and style. The quality, I'd hasten to add, is pretty high - and, even more so, there's very few of those "I did this, I did that" poem that sometimes seemed to suffocate British poetry in a blanket of the overly-familiar.

So, on the one hand things are pretty good: that the transmission mechanism is not only there, but in a fully working order - and clearly there are poets who know each other; scenes within scenes - and there are clearly influences (Ashbery amongst them) that are to be welcomed. Ironically, our high priests, the Sean O'Briens, the Simon Armitages, the Carol Ann Duffy's seem less apparent as influence than one might have imagined half a dozen years ago. Cheap and on-demand publication has made it much easier to publish a wider range of poets. The letter I got a dozen years ago from an editor apologising that (I paraphrase), "a lot of poetry that would have got published, doesn't now, because our lists are full" thankfully doesn't still apply. 

Yet, I've been reading Chicago's "Poetry" for the last three years in an attempt to get the temperature of American verse, and I've failed to. The names of poets come and go, they are all good, all more than competent - and there are so many of them. The better known names, I see now, seem to be from a slightly early group, and making sense of the many is harder and harder. Because that dialogue that Stross talks about in SF is also necessary in poetry. Does one jump across the generations to talk with Robert Lowell or Allan Ginsberg? Or does one talk in university common rooms or urban pubs with ones peers? Or does one peruse the internet - plucking out those pluckier poets who publish there? Shamefully, we've not seen a second northern poetry library to match the southern one. I was lucky enough to be living in London from 1996-7 and that helped in so many ways as I started taking poetry seriously once more, in my late 20s. Anthologies, magazines and nights offer their own entry-point: but though we are at a good point in so many ways; so many poets, so much of it a reasonably quality, so many different facets - I'm much less sure that one can keep the whole thing in one's mind. Pick out a poem or a poet that you quite like - say in the Bloodaxe anthology "Identity Parade" - and explore a little. Editors like Roddy Lumsden have been remarkably catholic compared with their predecessors (that Motion/Morrison book again), but reading more poems and more poets than I've ever done, I find it harder to pick it out the stand out poem of the year or the generation or even of the moment; I find it harder to use reading (at least reading of contemporary work) as a useful counterpoint to my writing.

In the US this "problem" (if it is a problem) is multiplied. The number of English-language poets writing in the world would make a small army now. Its possible to ignore (wilfully or accidentally) the big names, or the local scenes without even noticing. Over time, I wonder if this call for attention - that me, every other poet, makes - becomes a cry of loneliness? And if it is other poets that remain key to any poet's own development (even if its in rejection of their work), then I do think its the poem that is the thing that makes a difference. With a couple of exceptions, its hard to recall a particular poem of this last decade that either exemplifies the age, or stands beyond it. My sense is that I'm worrying too much; that Stross is worrying too much. But poetry and SF have a few things in common. They have both a popular image, and a hardcore following. The former can sometimes deafen the latter (We're still in a world where "If" is our nation's favourite poem!) - their advocates are passionate; their best writers are often their best readers. But also I wonder if both are accidental victims of the paradigm shifts of the information age? Where is SF in a world that looks so much like the future that it predicted? And where is poetry when it leaves behind the bearings of its age, and speaks only to and of itself? The answer, as ever, is in the works that are yet to come. Bring them on.