Gregory Betts on This Transforming World (and Its Poetry)

Visit the Irish Times to read Gregory Betts's thoughts on the state of contemporary verse, informed by two 2019 poetry collections: Motherbabyhome by Kimberly Campanello, and this is no longer entertainment by Christodoulos Makris. "There is a false dichotomy, too often and too easily invoked, between traditional verse and experimental poetry," Betts writes. From there: 

I understand where the distinction comes from. Traditional forms and literary techniques respond to the historic role of poetry in Irish society. Poetry has been a tool to hold the stories, beliefs, language and music of a people. It draws us together and is beloved for doing so.

In contrast, newer forms seem more alienating, harder to understand, and almost arrogant in their disregard for that tradition. But what if there is call to disregard certain aspects of the tradition?

Let me offer an example to illustrate the need. Kimberly Campanello’s Motherbabyhome (2019) is a 796-page tome of text that most poets from Chaucer to Heaney would not recognise as poetry. Clearly “experimental”, each page is a mess of words and letters that are sometimes legible but sometimes not. The visual effect can be disorienting. Furthermore, everything in the book is copied from somewhere else: “plagiarised” if you are feeling ungenerous, “found text” if you are familiar with 20th Century avant-garde writing,-or, more properly, part of an emergent 21st Century school of “conceptual” experimental writing, if you really want to figure out this puzzle.

Continue reading at the Irish Times.