Madam, – Having been present at the Poetry Now festival for the past four years, I believe that the concerns expressed by John McAuliffe, Conor O’Callaghan and Patrick Galvin (April 7th) have been unsatisfactorily addressed by Richard Shakespeare (April 11th).
The amalgamation of the Poetry Now Festival into another festival (curiously named “DLR Mountains to the Sea Book Festival”, with an emphasis on books) will destroy the unique identity that Poetry Now has established and developed over the past 16 years. Assigning a curator for a sub-section of this new festival will not be enough to preserve this identity. All of the poets present at this year’s festival expressed grave concerns about the decision to abolish Poetry Now.
The financial crisis through which we are all living is alluded to by Mr Shakespeare, but this is not solely a financial decision: if DLR County Council were committed to Poetry Now it would seek (and find) ways to run the festival on a tighter budget, perhaps even temporarily scaling the festival down. Abolishing the festival is a drastic measure that will cost much more than its saves.
Audience figures for each of the years that I have been present have been very high. The audience for poetry is ever expanding and it is undoubtedly one of the most immediately recognisable aspects of Ireland’s literary culture all over the world. The taxi driver bringing me back to Dublin city centre after an evening at this year’s festival explained that he learned poetry by heart to overcome a stammer and spoke with enthusiasm about diction. Mr Shakespeare should be assured that poetry reaches all levels of Irish society and the best way that he can deliver on the county council’s mission to expand the audience is by preserving the identity of the Poetry Now Festival and building upon its extraordinary success. – Yours, etc,