In my review last week of the annual Aldeburgh Poetry Festival, I made  a  comment about "the huge gulf that now exists between the American and British approaches to poetry – particularly prose poetry" – which prompted a couple of our regular contributors to ask if we could explain this in a  little more depth. Well, I'm not sure if I can as this is the type of topic people write masters degrees about (and as was reported earlier this year, I dropped out of my MA course) nevertheless, here goes...

In my 'umble opinion, English poetry (I'll leave the Scots, Welsh & Northern Irish to fight their own corners) is  still obsessed with – form, rhythms, rhymes, metre, iambic pentameters, dactyls and Uncle Tom Tetrameter and all. In otherwords, what I'll call 'old school' or 'proper' poetry – the apostrophes are deliberately ironic. Whereas American poetry has a more fluid approach – placing far greater emphasis upon ideas and content rather than form.

This was highlighted in some of the craft talks at Aldeburgh where we had one (elderly) English poet complaining that some modern poets (I think he had  in mind Walt Whitman) were writing nothing more than "versified journals and prose narratives". While another – Clive James (OK, so he's Australian but he's now more of an English 'national treasure') – said that "without form you cannot be expressive". This is in sharp contrast to the largely American prose poem school that believes the constraints of form stifle creativity – because you are forever trying to find words that suit your self imposed rhyme schemes and metres.

I've since discussed this with a couple of other writers who were at Aldeburgh and their comments included the following remarks...
 
"UK poetry really is stagnating due to its rigid set of rules, isn’t it"
 
"US poetry has a distinctive style but it has a sense of moving forward, experimentation, variety – whereas quite a lot of British poets just seem to be looking backwards."
 
"At Aldeburgh, even the ‘new voices’ poets sounded stuffy and two out of three of the Jerwoods: same predictable old rhythms and cadences, lofty ‘poetic’ subjects, even ghastly puns."
 
"I’m not being critical for the sake of it - I'd wanted to enjoy it and see where the cutting edge was at."

"I believe it’s the elitism here that makes ‘craft’ a higher priority than using poetry to communicate - and those who ignore the rules are labelled lightweight."

Personally I'm starting to wonder whether the big difference between the American and English approaches is that US poets write to perform before wider audiences whereas English poets write to impress other poets?

As mentioned in my original review, one of the best sessions was Me Tarzan, You Jane between the American poets Barbara Hamby and David Kirby – which looked at the concepts of 'ultra-talk' and 'voice'. Here are some more detailed notes on that session taken by my friend, fellow poet and occasional collaborator Beverly Ellis – I'm relying on her notes because (a) I couldn't drag my lazy arse out of bed early enough to catch the start of the session (9:00am on a  Sunday morning!!) and (b) because even when I did get there, my faculties hadn't taken on enough caffeine to be capable of note-taking. (I'm not a morning person.) Here are the notes...

* Poetry should be pleasurable, first and foremost. A possible reason for poetry’s current status in the arts may be that providing pleasure has taken a back-seat to being intellectually stimulating.  Poems should appeal to the general public, as well as specialist audiences.

* Ultra Talk is NOT the McPoem which just makes an observation about what can be seen in the present moment.  It is a bigger poem with more than one voice.  These poems should be anecdotes, action-packed, contain references to pop-culture, with many tongues speaking – all linked together, to light up the circuit.  Reflection and discourse have a place here, not just visual images used as definition.

* The Ultra Talk poem is not just one voice in a pencil spotlight; others are also present, at least by implication or for part of the time.  The ‘I’ of these poems is Everyman.  Other characters come in, eg Mother or Grandma via sayings, or what happens in response to: ‘I wonder if…’.  The primary narrative voice may act as ‘a policeman busting himself’, eg for earlier self-righteous statements or as exposition.

* The present moment should convey awareness of other times (past/future) or other dimensions.  These poems display the neon signs which occur on a narrative journey: movies, not ‘still life’; the images should be operatic, cinematic.  The genre of the poem should be similarly inclusive, ie comedy with a dark heart or tragedy which is capable of laughter.  There is usually a type of volta/turn in these poems – but in the content (a change of fortune or perspective), eg ‘Why I Hate Martin Frobisher’ by Phyllis Moore.  The poems go from A to B, but often via X.

* The drama of the poem should not just exist on stage if/when it is performed, but should all be transferred to the page: put it all in.  You don’t have to ‘pack a small suitcase’; you can have a steamer trunk.  The language should be imaginative and the writing specific in order to recreate the world of a particular emotion on the page, eg old girlfriends weeping at a man’s funeral (Rodney Jones). 

* Ultra Talk poems often have long lines and loose structure, but the style/content can be used within established forms - eg sonnets, acrostics - to push the boundaries of these forms and try to make them work for you.  Above all, these poems should be quirky and original, the opposite of the ‘workshop poem’.  Both Kirby and Hamby had noted that the undergrads they taught were more prepared to try wild stuff and risk failure than the postgrads who were more ambitious/wanted to teach and so produced technically correct, clever but lifeless writing (‘the dead poems’) and took a hard line on those who are nuttier.

We'll be publishing a couple of Beverly's poems later this week.