READING TO WRITE POEMS

Some extra categories

There is an intervention by poets to be made, into the fiction-led "should writers read" debate and the "should writers read for pleasure" sequel. It should have something particular, and not only concerning that poets don't get paid very much. It should also consider Donald Davie's dictum that there is a group pressure to remain at the level of the skilled amateur – because for them, and you can detect this in many blurbs that aren't (soi-disant) political, everything is "reading for pleasure" if they read other poets at all. For the practitioner of the ancient art, there is definitely reading for fulfilment, for a guide to living, and living must include pleasure. I wonder too about suggesting a new category for the current debaters of "reading for morality", which is what enables us to sift among people who make political speeches and also to act locally (which will affect the personal anecdotes in our own poems but also guide us in making narrative without it always having to be politically exemplary – whatever that is – line by line). Regardless of all of this, what of seeing the poet made to struggle by their poem – not with the poetry basics, but with a form they could handle easily if it were inert? An oeuvre entirely composed of good poems that are totally commonplace workmanlike in the idiom of a century or two up to the day is unlikely to survive. So is the struggle crucial, and how do poets do their reading of other poems to aid the struggle only of not writing badly (not, per se, every time the political struggle nor, as with fiction, "good writing"/the saleable)?

TO OLDER WRITERS LIKE ME

I think this short piece, and indeed the trend it commented on, is more about imperatives for beginning writers. But such as it is, it implies what the market is for my own writing: what the audience's expectations are and how to grab their attention with my marketing (if not the actual writing). In terms of older writers, I can't imagine there are many who don't read; and it's lovely to swap stories about the reading that has influenced us, with my older peers.

But I'm also asking about what kinds of reading, as older writers who read, that we SHOULD do. As I think that subject is rather unexamined, I was proposing categories to think about