Open Doors at the Poetry Society
I joined the Poetry Society in 2007 as an experiment - for years I had been wary of it and uncertain whether it spoke to or for me. I was slowly beginning to find surer feet as a poet at the time and thought it would be worthwhile seeing what the Society had to offer.
At first I wasn't sure it could offer me that much - the Poetry Review, whilst a worthwhile organ, was not enough on its own to hold my attention and my fee. There are plenty of other magazines out there, and it's only through the reading of all of them that one can see what a broad church poetry can, and should, be. Magma, Tears in the Fence, Acumen, Ambit, The North, Poetry Review and any number of other, smaller magazines help oxygenate modern poetry in the same manner as a rainforest helps us keep breathing. Only by accepting diversity can poetry survive.
Then something changed my perspective on the PoSoc - Judith Palmer became the Society's director. I'd encountered Judith at the Royal Festival Hall in 2000, where she ran the PR for one of my father's Poetry Olympics events, and had heard more of her on the radio. She was a confident and inclusive voice and the more I knew about her, from all sorts of different perspectives, the more I liked.
Her unstinting enthusiasm for poetry of whatever stripe has been apparent as long as I've known of her, so I was intrigued to see what would happen with her in charge of the Society. To my delight, the Society bloomed, became more inclusive, more exciting, more willing than ever to engage with people who might not normally be drawn to poetry. She pulled off sweet stunts like the Knit a Poem project. She made the Society, and poetry, more approachable.
Reader, I stayed with the Society!
So, of course, when Judith suddenly resigned a couple of months ago and no word came out about the reasons, I wanted to know more - a closed off, schtumm Society was not what I wanted. So I joined Kate Clanchy's group calling for a requisition and an Emergency General Meeting, knowing nothing of the circumstances except that I wanted to know what was going on, alongside 450 or so others. For this I, and many others, have been accused of being unbalanced, wrong-thinking and destructive. All for wanting to know why the truth has been suppressed.
It's sad to see that the majority of the early press reports on the matter have been thinly veiled churnalism, vapidly repeating one point of view, or gleefuly harping on about middle class beardies. At least that seems to be beginning to change, now that Judith Palmer has released her account of events. It is too easy to fall back on stereotype, and one of the joys of the last three years is that Judith and others have been chipping away slowly at the usual perceptions of poets and poetry. So the hoo-hah about funding and the running of Poetry Review has been a major step backwards.
As I have been writing this, a petition has come in, which I urge you to sign if you are interested in poetry and its furtherance as an art, asking for the immediate reinstatement of Judith Palmer as director of the Poetry Society. She and the Society's staff have been turning the Poetry Society well on its way to being a 21st century-relevant, open-hearted, open-handed, generous and exciting organisation for anyone and everyone interested in poetry, whatever their creed, colour, race or class. It would be a terrible shame if she were not allowed to continue this good work and the forces of silence and closed doors were allowed free reign.
