Where's the Poetry....?

I've been quite immersed in the poetry world the last few years. I think I decided to step back a little from it, or maybe it just happened. I read a few poems at the St. Ann's Book Fair in June, but that was about my only poetry "gig" this year. The last night I read at, I changed my mind at the last minute and read a short story.

And though I've not consciously stopped going to things I've had quite a busy time, and just haven't caught so much as I usually do. Looking at the list of Next Gen Poets, I'd read 6 or 7, and as the annual prize season comes round, books I really should have taken a look at, like Kei Miller and Liz Berry's which respectively won Forward best collection and best new collection last night, I've not got round to. I missed the very well attended Free Verse Book Fair in London as was travelling back from somewhere the day before.

Part of my disengaging is simply lack of time, but also the group I'd been involved with, North West Poets, after a couple of years of busy activity, has had a bit of a hiatus. Poetry might be there on every supermarket shelf, but if you don't go looking for it, its easy to miss. I realise that I usually buy more poetry collections than I've done this year as well. I think apart from Toby Martinez De La Rivaz's "Terror"  and Mark Burnhope's "Species" I've not picked anything up recently. I had a bit of flurry of subscribing to magazines, but some of those subscriptions have dropped off, or have proven a bit disappointing.

I guess poetry remains a bit of a maze - and after a couple of signature anthologies a few years ago -  things have reverted to type. Carol Ann Duffy is still poet laureate, Simon Armitage is still our best loved poet. John Cooper Clarke and Roger McGough are still national treasures. Poetry Review is as solidly predictable as ever.  I realise there's not one magazine that really does a good job at taking the temperature of contemporary poetry, though I think the Rialto, Oxford Poetry and the Wolf might manage it between them.

And I need to make more of an effort. Guess what, its  National Poetry Day tomorrow. There's a strange but potentially interesting event with Jeffrey Wainwright at Anthony Burgess tomorrow night.  A "poetry inquisition" - well there are some poets I'd like to see face an inquisition, the always erudite Wainwright is thankfully not one of them. (I wonder when words lose their impact - there was recent anger on Facebook about a "First Word War" poetry slam.... yet we can happily appropriate the Spanish Inquisition. We're some way off a Poetry Pogrom I hope, unless you count the last kerfuffle at the Poetry Society.)

Then this Saturday, two poets I do admire, Richard Barrett and visitor to the city Jonty Tiplady are performing at the always enjoyable Peter Barlow's Cigarette.