Making Poetry Popular

Ryan, you are right.  Poetry is NOT dead.  The problem is, a lot of people think it is ("the rumours of my death have been greatly exaggerated") and it's bloody hard for a ghost to make itself heard.  And that's probably the point -- we know it's still alive and humming, but we're inside it. 

And it isn't just poetry.  Many other genres of the arts are written off as "hobbies" and "irrelevant", when in fact the producers of these arts are spending a large part of their lives (time which should rightfully be earning them money) doing something that is immediately relevant and important for a society that doesn't even realise it's too stupid to get it.  Throughout history the measure of a society's greatness has been through its art -- the Golden Age of Athens wasn't so called because its treasury was full.  And yet perhaps that's their game, the mysterious Powers That Be -- keep people at each other's throats, make it impossible for the artists to get a word in edgeways, and with so much noise nobody will be able to hear when the important questions are asked so it will avoid awkward answers.  

If we really want to live in a world of gladiators and jaded morons laughing at the less fortunate, we're heading for the fall. I don't really fancy that life for my children.  And I've lived with discouragement for far too long, thinking that what I do as a writer is not important -- what I write might not be important, but if I can use it to open the way for people who do write valuable stuff (and I've read plenty of it in recent times) then I am sick of sitting on my arse gathering dust.  

Art is important.  I don't think I've ever said this before, but the shit for sale right now (for the most part) is not art.  It is commercial pretense.  The "exciting life story" of some ciminal or sports star (written with such-and-such) is not art.  A canvas painted the same colour as your sofa is not art.  Manufacturing pop stars is not art.  Voting people off an island is not art.  But the world has forgotten the distinction because they're not being shown an alternative, or if they are it's wrapped in academia and intellectualised so that people feel stupid if they don't understand it -- and you know what?  That's not really the point of art either.  

I don't know about you guys, but I don't write poetry just for poets to read.   And I certainly don't write it to please myself (it doesn't).  And yet listen to us, arguing the semantics of it when we should be out shouting at the world.  Poets are the world's worst procrastinators (or perhaps that should be "world's best") -- and it's time to stop that, or we'll never get anything done.  Not just for us.  It's not too ambitious to say that if art is given back a real place in the world, the world will be a better place.  

At least for starving artists...