A Companion to Contemporary British and Irish Poetry, 1960 - 2015. Группа авторов
with her publisher; which could not have been abated when she gave her next collection, Falling Awake (2016), to Cape Poetry, an imprint of Penguin Random House's Vintage Books. In contrast to Oswald, Denise Riley stepped into the poetry pool at the other end and with less of a splash. She published with a small imprint. Her Selected Poems was brought out by Ken Edwards's Reality Street in 2000. Her shortlisted collection, Say Something Back, was her first collection with Picador, an imprint of Pan Macmillan owned by the privately held Georg von Holtzbrinck Publishing Group that is based in Stuttgart. With Ian Duhig's The Blind Roadmaker, Picador had a second collection on the shortlist.
The second award that Burnside mentions is the T. S. Eliot Prize, which was inaugurated in 1993, celebrating the Poetry Book Society's fortieth anniversary and in honor of its founder. It is “awarded annually to the author of the best new collection of poetry published in the UK and Ireland.” (TSEliot.com 2019). In 2016, following the closing down of the Poetry Book Society, the T. S. Eliot Foundation, which was set up in 2012 following the death of Valerie Eliot to promote the poet's work and legacy, took over the running of the prize. The Foundation increased the value of the prize: the winner receives £20,000 and each of the shortlisted poets £1,500. A shortlist of 10 books was announced in October and the Shortlist Readings took place on January 15, 2017, in the Southbank Centre's Royal Festival Hall. The winner, Jacob Polley for his collection Jackself (Picador), was announced at an award ceremony the next day (January 16, 2017), where Polley and the shortlisted poets were presented with their checks (Poetry Book Society n.d.). A close study and analysis of the winners from 2006 until 2018 gives the impression of monotony and predictability; it could be argued that a desirable momentum of surprise has been missing as regards the publishers of the winning poets. In the past decade, Faber & Faber published the winning poet four times: Heaney in 2006, Walcott in 2010, Olds in 2012, and Hannah Sullivan in 2018. Cape came up trumps on three occasions: Burnside in 2011, Olds in 2012, Ocean Vuong in 2017; Bloodaxe twice with Hadfield in 2008 and Gross in 2009, while Picador (O'Brien in 2007) and Carcanet (Morrissey in 2013) could celebrate only one poet each from their list. In this context, Eric Falci rightly observes that “one aspect of the ecosystem of contemporary British poetry is the enduring importance of a very small number of London‐based imprints whose slim volumes dominate the prize circuit and reviews pages” (Falci 2015, 209). For David Wheatley, “prizes occupy the threshold between the trading floor of reviews, group membership and public visibility, and the unknown territory of the literary afterlife. Reputation is not double‐entry book‐keeping, and no amount of entries in the first column can guarantee a healthy surplus in the second.” He calls prizes “racing tips, punts on posterity,” which are “heavily prone to error” (Wheatley 2015, 163). Already in 2002, Michael Schmidt had warned that “[p]oetry prizes are now the vehicle of literary reception. Control the prizes, and you control the culture of reception” (Schmidt 2002, 1). He arrived at this conclusion after reading Bookworm in Private Eye (26 July–8 August 2002) who analyzed the Forward Prize and its judges:
This year's judges include two poets published by Picador (Sean O'Brien and Michael Donaghy), who have shortlisted two other Picador poets (Peter Porter and Paul Farley) for the £10,000 top prize. Last year's judging panel also included two Picador poets – Donaghy (again) and Peter Porter.
Last year Porter gave the main prize to Sean O'Brien. What's the betting O'Brien won't give it back to his mentor, enabling both to pocket ten grand? Or will their protégé Paul Farley be the one to take the loot this time round?
Last year the £5,000 prize for “best first collection” went to another Picador poet, John Stammers (a product of Donaghy's poetry workshops), and the £1,000 “best single poem” prize was given to Ian Duhig for a poem – you guessed it – from his forthcoming Picador collection. The same poem earlier won Duhig the £5,000 top prize in the Poetry Society's national poetry competition, judged by a three‐man panel including his mate Don Paterson, the foul‐mouthed Scottish bard who also happens to be the poetry editor at, er, Picador.
This year's five‐poet Forward shortlist includes two other chums, David Harsent and John Fuller (winner of the Forward prize in 1996, when one of the judges was again Sean O'Brien). And Sean O'Brazen was one of three judges of the 1997 T. S. Eliot prize (worth £5,000), which was awarded to … his own editor, Don Paterson.
Duhig, Donaghy, O'Brien, Harsent and Paterson all have the same agent, TriplePA, aka Gerry Wardle – who just happens to be Sean O'Brien's partner. And Donaghy, Duhig, Farley, Fuller, Harsent, Paterson and Porter have all received fulsome write‐ups from the Sunday Times's main poetry critic, one Sean O'Brien.
(Bookworm 2002, 25; also cf. Stone 2016)
In a 2014 blog post, Fiona Moore analyzed the shortlists, from 2004 to 2013, of the T. S. Eliot Prize and the Forward Prize for Best Collection, counted the publishers of the shortlisted books, and compared them with the judges' and the Poetry Book Society selectors' publishers. All the winning collections were published by one of the “Big Five”: Bloodaxe, Cape, Carcanet, Faber, and Picador. When she added to the “Big Five” other big publishers (e.g., Seren, Chatto, Gallery Press), only 2% of the shortlisted books came from small publishers. The Forward Prize percentage at 14 was slightly better. Ninety‐three percent of the Eliot Prize judges and three out of every four Forward judges were published by one of the “Big Five.” Even currently speaking, in 2018 and 2019, the situation has not changed a bit: two Bloodaxe titles and one each from Faber, Cape, and Carcanet are on the 2019 Forward Best Collection shortlist. The three judges who are also poets are Tara Bergin (Carcanet), Andrew McMillan (Cape), and Carol Rumens (Seren/Blooadaxe). The 2018 T. S. Eliot shortlist comprised four books from Faber, two from Penguin, and one each from Bloodaxe, Carcanet, Picador, and, finally, from the small press HappenStance. The jury was chaired by Sinéad Morrissey (Carcanet), the other two jurors were Daljit Nagra (Faber) and Clare Pollard (Bloodaxe).
The prize system is not simply to be characterized as big handouts serving the interests of “big” publishers though. One of the most prestigious awards has, in fact, little to offer in the way of prize money. The Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize, at its initiation in 1963 was worth just £1,000, then increased to the not exactly princely sum of £1,500 in 2014. It has, however, a list of winners who make up a who's who of contemporary poetry: among them are Seamus Heaney (1968), Geoffrey Hill (1970), Douglas Dunn (1976), Paul Muldoon (1982, 1992), John Burnside (1994), and Alice Oswald (2006). This impressive line of tradition was maintained when its administration celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of the award in 2014, with the judges Julia Copus, Ruth Padel, and Max Porter giving the prize to two joint‐winner collections: Bright Travellers (Jonathan Cape) by Fiona Benson and Black Country (Chatto & Windus) by Liz Berry. The terms of eligibility of the prize, it must be added, preserve it from narrowness; it varies the category of its recipients by alternately recognizing a volume of poetry or of fiction by a citizen of the UK, Ireland, or the Commonwealth under the age of 40, that last condition saving it from being permanently committed to established authors. A final important aspect: the judges are not inevitably and a priori Faber authors, but are nominated afresh every year by the editors of newspapers and magazines.
The guidelines defining the rules and conditions of entry usually contain the stereotype requirement “first published in the UK or the Republic of Ireland.” The T. S. Eliot Foundation administering the T. S. Eliot Prize, famously described by Andrew Motion as “the prize most poets want to win,” concedes simultaneous publication in another country within 1 year. The Forward Arts Foundation defines the eligibility of entries for their three poetry categories in almost identical terms. The Costa Book Awards differ from the previously mentioned awards only in that the author must have been resident in the UK or Ireland for at least 6 months per year in the preceding 3 years. Even the Michael Marks Awards for poetry pamphlets, established in 2009, confine entry to UK publications. By recognizing the enormous contribution that small presses and little magazines make to the poetry world, this award is very welcome. Previous winners—among them the Crater Press, Oystercatcher Press, HappenStance, smith|doorstop, Flarestack Poets, Rack Press, Mariscat Press, The Emma Press, and Guillemot Press—have more than deserved the award. However, the parochial policy of the institutions administering these awards is reminiscent