Mainstream Poetry

The main reason I shared Niall’s article is because I felt it contained sentiments that I find increasingly prevalent across the British poetry strata. As someone who began writing poems to be read rather than heard I was fully aware that my readers differed frantically to those I write for now (as in when I sit to write a spoken word piece). To say that those people who buy page poetry and those who attend spoken word events are exclusively similar in both class and ethnicity would be erroneous and naive. I’ve read at readings and the audience has been predominately white middle class, then at the turn of the next day I find myself performing at a spoken word event where the audience is far more eclectic in ethnicity, class and income. I also quoted Niall this morning on Twitter, ‘mainstream poetry is mainly white and middle/upper class, no matter how loudly it heralds the occasional exception to the rule’ and the response I received was far more interesting than I could have anticipated.

Many of my followers (who also follow other poets and who are active/established poets themselves) argued that ‘mainstream poetry’ is actually far more embraced, appreciated and consumed by those of the lower classes, specifically the non-white lower classes. Now, what I find compelling are the names people attribute to ‘mainstream poetry’ in particular the likes of Kate Tempest, Polar Bear, Lowkey, Akala, Inua Ellams, Dean Atta, Warsan Shire and myself were all mentioned as falling under the rubric of 21st century mainstream poets. My contention is that it comes back to popularity, marketability, relevance and accessibility. If we were to play with semantics and swap mainstream for popular then we may be able to elucidate some of the coinciding beliefs that hazard the current discourse. I would argue here that many of Britain’s most popular and relevant poets, be they performers, rappers or readers, are supported at a far more sincere level and with a sufficient amount of loyalty and zeal than many of Britain’s ‘mainstream poets‘ that Niall and Jon Sands mentioned, i.e your archetypical high-brow, white middle class male.

If we settle for the fact that hip-hop is just another relative of poetry as Niall correctly stated, as is the spoken word/performance format, plus the page medium then it becomes increasingly obvious that perhaps the poetry mainstream no longer really consists of your T.S Elliot nominees or middle aged white men living in the foliating solace of the Devonshire countryside. Perhaps this subtle panoply of working class writers who stand united as black, brown and white only to go largely unrecognized by the classic literary world are the ones who are in fact preserving the future of both poetry and revolutionary thought.

It’s here in the so called underground of poetry that I find and feel the political impetus that edges our tomorrow forward, the charge that is both polemic and radical but yet so desperately needed and wanted by the masses. I find the conservative overtones of the middle classes to be falsified, sheltered and riddled with a privileged guilt, one that makes it increasingly difficult to absorb a poem about Iraq, Libya or Afghanistan delivered viscerally by an olive skin man with a thick, proud beard. I only say this because I’ve been performing at literature festivals for the past year and the response I receive when I do poems that in London have received standing ovations is frighteningly different. I understand and appreciate the argument about poetic technique which many claim is solely responsible for creating the stylistic difference between rap, spoken word and the written word, either way I think a change in narrative as well as acknowledgment is much needed if we are to reintroduce a lost audience to what was initially written for and by them.


To read the brilliant article that Niall O’ Sullivan’s wrote looking at mainstream poetry please click here.