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Civil Wars at the Poetry Society 

The past year has seen the third civil war in the Poetry Society during my lifetime. The first one took place in 1949 before I had uttered my first word. The second one, which raged from 1975 to 1976, might not have happened had I not made a phone call to Irving Weinman, thereby setting in motion the Poetry Society Reform Movement. As for the third, it seems to have been driven by connections on the web including a successful on-line petition. I haven't been a member for a few years, chiefly because I live abroad and come to Britain at most twice a year. Four issues of Poetry Review are the chief benefit for the expatriate as the newsletter concerns activities in which I can't participate. 

 

The first war was ostensibly the result of Muriel Spark's editorship of Poetry Review from 1948 to 1949. She had taken over from the Chevalier Galloway Kyle who had been the second editor after Harold Monro for over thirty years. In his memoirs Inside the Forties Derek Stanford mentions that the Chevalier had a flat above the Poetry Society premises, which an unnamed officer of the Society had earmarked for Muriel Spark - and hopefully himself - after levering the old boy out. 

 

In those days Poetry Review appeared, as PN Review does today, every two months. From my copy for December-January 1949, Muriel Spark's editorship had led to changes, including the presence of some young and up-and-coming critics, with Peter Russell, Alex Comfort, G.S. Fraser and John Waller doing the book reviews, and George Woodcock, the Canadian anarchist (not the future leader of the TUC), writing an article entitled 'Poets at Work'. Amongst other things, there are also articles on Emily Bronte and the technical achievement of Shakespeare's sonnets, where I have discovered that, unlike other English-language poets, Shakespeare was unafraid of sibilance. Honestly, that chap got away with everything! 

 

At the end of the magazine are letters to the editor and the results of my favourite poetry competition of all time, the Lord Alfred Douglas Sonnet Competition, to which the rhyme scheme, 1-2-2-1, 1-2-2-1 for the octet and 3-4-5, 3-4-5 or 3-4-3, 3-4-3, had to be strictly adhered. The Poetry Society also offered a critical service where two poems could be submitted for five shillings and further poems for an additional two shillings. I guess one should multiply by fifty to get an idea of the real cost today. Finally, there were the examinations in verse-speaking, which secured an additional income for the Poetry Society, and which continued for many years until succeeded by a broader range of educational activities. A lot of contemporary poets could do with training in verse-speaking in place of the MAs in Creative Writing, if only to get rid of a characteristic portentous drone whose subtext is 'This is a serious matter and I am the vehicle of its pain and loss.' Oh please shut up!

 

The criticism varies from the trenchant (Peter Russell), through distinguished (GS Fraser), to the provocative (Alex Comfort): 'During the war, the Sunday Times (or another paper of similar appearance - I did not keep count) was looking for War Poets. Most of us knew what it wanted and were determined that as far as we were concerned it was not going to get it.' In 1948 those were fighting words from a conchie, as Alex Comfort had been, and probably contributed to the successful putsch which removed Muriel Spark as General Secretary and editor of Poetry Review

 

The poetry itself in that issue is mediocre. There are one or two names who went on to achieve respectable poetic reputations: Michael Hamburger, James Kirkup, and Robert Greacen. Elizabeth Bartlett has a decent poem, 'Letter from Cornwall'. Thereafter she disappears for some years. Nicholas Moore has a poem which departs from a famous line of Catullus, and Derek Stanford is represented by a translation from Apollinaire. The other poems, including the journalist Hardiman Scott's 'Elegy for Gandhi', are either competent Georgian or hark back to the decadents (in the case of Iain Fletcher) or to Madame Blavatsky (Odette Tchernine's 'The Broken Light'). My sense is that Muriel Spark gradually improved the quality of the poetry, and had she continued, it might have emerged as a major magazine for the new poetry of the 1950s. What is more, she was spending money (another bone of contention with her opponents), which is always a good way to attract good poets. 

 

As a result, she was dismissed by a reaction for whom even gradual change was far too much of a shock to the system. It was led by the pioneer of contraception, Dr Marie Stopes. Derek Stanford has a brief, lively account of the 1949 Annual General Meeting in which he describes Stopes as 'a silk clad sow' who believed that Oscar Wilde had corrupted Lord Alfred Douglas, and not that the good nobleman was naturally homosexual: 'unnatural vice' can't be natural! I once found one of her manuals amongst the effects of my paternal grandfather. In it she recommends that a marriage can be enhanced if man and wife fall asleep after the act while still united. I suppose the scissors' position would be the most suitable for this, although Stopes' technical advice was to my recollection both vague and complicated. She was enraged by Tambimuttu's defence of Muriel Spark, which took the line that a good poetry editor should endanger the Poetry Society's finances perhaps to the point of bankruptcy.

 

I have four copies of Poetry Review following Muriel Spark's departure edited by the legendary John Gawsworth, crapulous king of Redonda. The prose content has the same variety as in Muriel Spark's issues. There are articles by GS Fraser on Sidney Keyes, Roy Campbell on Edith Sitwell, Ruth Pitter on William Collins, Patricia Ledward on Ruth Pitter, a consideration of Edmund Wilson's Axel's Castle by Raymond Tong, an anthology by Geoffrey Grigson, and a collection of tributes to Ezra Pound put together by Peter Russell. Elsewhere in the prose, Gawsworth's contributors hark back to the decadents and the Edwardians. The fell name of Lord Dunsany appears at the head of an article entitled 'The Food of the Imagination', which is mostly about Tennyson. The poetry does not continue the slight progress made by Muriel Spark. The Edwardian and decadent manner so carefully distinguished by CK Stead in The New Poetic becomes hopelessly conflated with the Georgians. Despite the occasional gifted modern such as John Heath-Stubbs, the poets include Wilfrid Gibson, a poet called Herbert Palmer who reads like a relic of the rhetorical Victorian manner, Frances Cornford, Monk Gibbon, who once cheeked Yeats, and Wrey Gardiner, a publisher who had his own 1940s' magazine, Poetry Quarterly, and whose publishing house was staffed entirely by would-be poets.

 

It is the presence of the more minor figures that helps to build up a picture of the membership, and to enable us recognise a continuum of poets who range from the well-known and the successful to the amateur, and whose preoccupations shift from literature to politics, from the media as it then was to diplomacy, the provinces and even the occult. A surprising number have entries in wikipedia. George Rostrevor Hamilton was a minor First World War poet and distinguished civil servant. He caused a stir by publishing a piece about the number of definite articles in Auden's poetry, and demonstrating that there was a higher proportion than in older styles. I wonder if he did the same for indefinite articles. The late Lord Rennel of Rodd (1858-1941), whose 'Invocation to America' leads off the September-October 1950 issue, was a diplomat who had a role in the dissolution of the union of Sweden and Norway in 1905, and later, as ambassador to Italy, he secured Italy's support of the Entente. He seems to have been awarded every Victorian honour, and his poetry is metrically correct, if exactly the sort of thing that prompted Ezra Pound's 'Some Do's and Don'ts'. EHW Meyerstein was a friend of John Wain, and had a taste for flagellation. He wrote poetry, stories and a life of Chatterton. RH Mottram, no relative of Eric Mottram, was Mayor of Norwich. Margaret Stanley-Wrench won the Newdigate prize for poetry in 1937, and appeared in New Oxford Poetry in 1936 and 1937. An American, Ruth Crary, won the Lord Alfred Douglas Sonnet competition two years in a row. My web search on her threw up a translation of Chinese Folk tales and a volume from 1955 called Poetry is Fun. The most mysterious figure was Wrenne Jarman, mentioned by Derek Stanford as an extraordinarily beautiful literary hostess. She was unfortunate to entertain in her circle in Richmond a drunk Dylan Thomas, who recited in exemplary fashion, and then vomited into the fireplace. She remarked afterwards to Stanford that 'Don't you think the writing of poetry should be limited to gentlemen?' She was a friend of the bogus clergyman and necromancer, Montague Summers, and attracted the attention of Aleister Crowley. She died of cancer in 1953 aged forty-two, and an unknown admirer used to place flowers there into the 1990s. 

 

The Poetry Society pottered along in the 1950s. Gawsworth left Poetry Review in 1952, and it was edited by a committee for ten years. In the 1960s, editors introduced more contemporary work into its pages. Otherwise the Society's activities remained much the same: readings, lectures, verse-speaking examinations. An Education Secretary was appointed, and some time in the 1970s WH Smith sponsored a 'Poets in Schools' programme, one of the foundation stones for opening up education to the work and presence of contemporary writers. Universities had occasional fellowships for poets, for example the Gregory Fellow at Leeds, but these were in the nature of sinecures to enable a poet to write without worrying about where the next meal was coming from. WS Graham once hitchhiked from Cornwall to be interviewed for the Gregory Fellowship, but decided against accepting it and hitchhiked back to Cornwall. 

 

By the 1970s the Poetry Society, now located in Earls Court Square, was part of the contemporary scene, but hardly the place where new poets were going to be discovered. It was a venue for readings and various groups of poets. The library was extensive, there was a handy little bookshop, and a bar. Going to a reading or a workshop there was sometimes a rackety business. The occasional beautiful woman appeared. I once spent an evening staring up into the eyes of a vastly amused Diana Rigg. One could also have a glass of wine with the likes of Tony Harrison and even Geoffrey Hill after their readings. However, the Poetry Society was not at the cutting edge of poetry. That was beginning to move to provincial cities such as Belfast, Glasgow, Newcastle and Manchester. Poetry Review did not have the excitement or prestige of The ReviewAmbitPhoenixThe HonestUlsterman, the London Magazine, or even Stand. Moreover, the Poetry Society still had vestiges of the old Edwardian genteel membership among its vice-presidents. My copy of issue 4 1975 lists Robert Armstrong, the first presider of the Ancient Order of Druids, and Margaret Rawlings, the stage actress, as vice-presidents. Armstrong had been one of the moving spirits who had got rid of Muriel Spark - at least according to her account. She had published a poem of his, which had been accepted by Kyle Galloway, but neglected to put his name on the front cover. Both Armstrong and Rawlings were on the General Council in 1948.

 

The rather peculiar composition of the habitués of Poetry Society, part old lady with a pink rinse and a poodle by her side, part middle-aged literary professional keeping tabs on this semi-important poetry venue, part young would-be poet on the make and, with the influx of the British Poetry Revival and the Association of Little Presses in the 1970s, part 1960s' revolutionary still seeking a turn-on equivalent to the 1965 Children of Albion gig at the Albert Hall, meant that the Poetry Society had an amorphous identity. Yet in the absence of anything more coherent, its sheer longevity made it seem the natural place for the Arts Council to invest in to promote poetry nationally. Sadly, the sheer oddness of the Poetry Society probably inhibited the Arts Council from full-blooded investment, with the consequence that it was chronically underfunded. 

 

The war of 1975 to 1976 began when two workshop groups were harassed out of the Poetry Society by an executive committee anxious to purify both the poetry promoted by the society, and the type of poetry consumer who came there. They in turn - and the General Council dominated by the British Poetry Revival (BRP) - felt themselves to be harassed by the Arts Council and a rump of literary professionals on the General Council. The Poetry Reform Movement secured an Extraordinary General meeting, which seemingly left the BRP in charge, but in reality signalled their rapid decline and exit from the Poetry Society. This left the literary professionals in charge with, on balance, beneficial results to the Poetry Society. A succession of distinguished editors, the best of whom was Peter Forbes despite his determinedly populist outlook, made Poetry Review one of the places to publish for an ambitious poet, but curiously Poetry Review does not spring to mind as the magazine where new talent first makes its mark, not if one compares it with The NorthPoetry Wales or the Rialto. However, the Society has discovered new talent through its National Poetry Competition. Duffy, Duhig, and Shapcott are names that spring immediately to mind. Tony Harrison's win changed him from a poet's poet into a national name, and Craig Raine's second place following a win in the TLS competition in the same year did him no harm. 

 

The Poetry Review remains a bone of contention, a Jenkins' Ear over which to start small, vicious wars. In 1975 the Poetry Reform Movement thought they were fighting for democracy, but they were careful to point out quite how awful they thought Poetry Review had become under the editorship of Eric Mottram. Issue 4 of 1975 contains almost nothing but poetry. There is information about the contributors, two advertisements from OUP's poetry list, and some details of the Poetry Society's services: verse-speaking examinations, the National Poetry Secretariat, Poets-in-Schools and the library. Only the Greenwood competition remains from twenty-five years before. The Lord Alfred Douglas Sonnet Competition has vanished. The annual subscription has risen from £1 to £3.75. After thirty-six years, the poetry seems inoffensive. Ed Dorn, Harry Guest, Lee Harwood, Barry MacSweeney, Jeff Nuttall, Tom Raworth, and Ken Smith are familiar names. Of these only Jeff Nuttall seems to make an effort to frighten the horses, 'Excreting shitless cherubim devoid of arse or armpit' - a hexameter no less! Harry Guest could almost fit into an issue of John Gawsworth: 'Brown water laps / at the abandoned boathouse. / Days grow old. I close / the windows earlier and deflect / those few enchantments inward / stretching parched hands / to the blaze of apple boughs.' It seems that it's not what you write, it's whose side you are on. Lee Harwood leavens his 'Notes of a Post Office Clerk' with little topographical sketches in the body of the poem. Ken Smith's poems would be unexceptionable in the present Poetry Review. Ralph La Charity has his first publication in Britain in this issue. (He still seems to be 'stirrin 'em up' in the USA in venues from Seattle to Austin, Texas.) 

 

The emergence of the literary professional running the Poetry Society largely for other literary professionals has a fatal flaw. Trends are kept up with, funding secured, services rationalised and expanded. But what about the membership? In 1950, the Poetry Society membership was from a literate middle-class, conservative in taste. It was the middle of the pyramid, the very top of which probably took good care to steer clear of the place. The old-fashioned poets, Roy Campbell and Vita Sackville-West, were on the General Council. The rest were either publishers like Wrey Gardiner or rank amateurs. In 1975 the General Council was composed almost exclusively of poets, mostly from the British Poetry Revival, with some mainstream poets who were literary professionals such as George Macbeth, Alan Brownjohn and George Wightman. The only non-poet was Alasdair Aston. One wonders what an analysis of the Poetry Society's membership now would reveal. It is unlikely to have the same composition as in the late 1940s. My conjecture is that, given the explosion in creative writing from the Arvon residential week to the PhD in Creative Writing, membership of the Poetry Society has lost its genteel bias, and now has a significant proportion of would-be 'professional poets.' With a fair degree of patronage at its disposal through the success of its educational activities, it is a useful organisation for a poet to belong to.

 

By the first decade of this century the success of the Poetry Society and minimal attendance at Annual General Meetings had made the Trustees (as the General Council is now known) careless. The General Secretary had been replaced by a Director with substantial executive powers independent of the Trustees' instructions. The third civil war began by an attempt by the Trustees to revert to the old way of doing business, with the Director taking instruction from the Trustees rather than placing proposals before them to be nodded through. What seems to have happened is that the Director secured an increase in the grant from the Arts Council through proposals she devised and presumably which the Trustees approved. Their decision to change the business plan without consulting the Director is incomprehensible in an organisation which now employs professional arts administrators. It is ironic in the light of the history of the previous two wars that the casus belli may have been once again Poetry Review and its editor. 

 

In 1949 Muriel Spark was both editor of Poetry Review and the General Secretary. In 2011 the Director, Judith Palmer, and the editor, Fiona Sampson, seemed to have been at loggerheads, with the editor attempting to secure an arrangement whereby Poetry Review would be funded by the Poetry Society, but become effectively independent of its management. If this had succeeded Poetry Reviewwould have become answerable only to the Trustees, and consequently at risk from all sorts of abuses, not the least of which would have been a necessity for the editor to keep the Trustees on his or her side. Being line-managed by an Arts administration professional at least reduces the risk of Poetry Review's content being determined by the interests of the literary professionals among the Trustees.

 

As in 1949 and 1976, the membership was responsible for bringing the Society back to a middle-of the-road state of affairs. In 1949 this meant the Poetry Society returning to a position which ignored most of what was happening in British poetry. In 1976 the Poetry Society was brought back to the mainstream into which it had drifted in the mid sixties. This year, to judge from those who signed the on-line petition for the reinstatement of Judith Palmer, the incompetence of the Trustees was redressed by poets of greater or lesser success and fame. These, however, were not the weird and wonderful folk of the 1940s, but literary professionals savvy to the possible reactions of grant-aiding bodies when their clients try to spend their grant on something for which they didn't apply. Despite an appeal under the name of Fiona Sampson warning of the danger of the loss of the Arts Council grant, this was combined with a thoroughly decent reaction to what was perceived as backstairs intrigue and underhand behaviour. The grant was suspended at the height of the war and has yet to be restored. Paradoxically, its restoration seems to be dependent not on the performance of the Director, but on a renewal of confidence in the Trustees by the Arts Council and the willingness of Fiona Sampson to work with her line manager, although probably her resignation as editor of Poetry Review would be the best solution for everybody.