The Renaissance of Poetry

I'll have to apologise, initially, if this post is lacking in depth or wide ranging reference; since returning to my (very) humble student abode in Leeds, I've suffered the crippling snags of a dire internet connection. I'd like, first of all, to thank Valley Press for inviting me to take part in this collaborative creative effort and to applaud myself heartily upon the back for contributing so promptly.

My part within the starry stratospheres of literature is as an (as yet) unknown poet, unpublished, unsought after, unsure. You may indeed say I play no part at all and yet I like to think of myself as playing some role, even just as a reader. We live in a society whereby consumers keep accounts working, after all. Over the past 12 months, I've been buying and hunting down new poetry as much as I can. This is probably a not-so-unconscious way of integrating myself a little more into the literary community. That's by-the-by for now, though.

Whilst I've been unearthing my sometime buried poetical fancies, it seems, too, that the country's critics, commentators and creative connoisseurs have been doing something the same. Two years in a row, now, a collection of poems has taken top gong at the yearly Costa Book Awards: Jo Shapcott followed this year in the footsteps of Christopher Reid. Influential nationals such as The Guardian and The Independent give greater prominence to verse than ever in their arts sections and websites. Hell, even the Daily Mail puzzled the curious rebirth of poesy (in an article I can't, for the life of me, find). Triggered by the wider publicity of authors like Shapcott, Reid & others, poetry nights and festivals are springing up all over the spot, whilst previously existing events go from strength to strength. Is this really the poetical phoenix rising from the ashes or have I turned up on the scene at rush hour and got excited by the same old traffic?

Someone (I'm going to hazard at Carol Ann Duffy, because I can't look it up at minute) said recently that, if one listened to the press all the time, you would have believed the 'renaissance of poetry' had been going on for decades now. Made me wonder. Made me wonder if poetry ever really falls off the radar. Does it ever stop mattering? Of course, the kind of folk perusing this here blog would cry blasphemy at the mere suggestion of such and yet the true question is: does it ever matter more or less to the casual reader?

It's something to consider, certainly and I'm left feeling like this blog has planted the seed of question rather than harvested the fruit of answer, as I might have liked. Still, all this rum-do over versification is good news for a guy like me....