Madam, - Fiona McCann's article on the DLR Poetry Now International Poetry Festival (The Arts, April 10th) made interesting reading. The festival featured a discussion on poetry, at which publisher and poet Peter Fallon voiced the view that "things are healthy, things are good" in the poetry world.
This generalising nonsense has been bruited about before now. It seems, if anything at all, to be an entirely mercantile view. It avoids any critical examination of contemporary Irish poetry or an analysis of the degree to which some poetry publishers and Irish poets have endeavoured to mould the critical perception of their work.
There is a great deal of Irish poetry being published which is (whisper it!) simply bad. Robust reviewing at one time attempted to cut through this morbid abundance. But some poets and publishers reacted, for different reasons and in different ways, against such reviewing.
Is it possible that some poetry publishers can dictate to an editor that it would be preferable if their latest offerings were not sent to X for reviewing? Poets themselves have tried even more Machiavellian tactics.
Whatever the reasons, there is a dumbing down, a levelling, of poetry reviewing. "Robust" is a four-letter word. I am not the only one who has begun to describe much contemporary poetry reviewing as simply advertising for the publishers.
No one seems to have concluded the obvious: that applying a butter-knife, rather than a scalpel, to the examination is illustrating a contempt for poetry. Publishers and poets should be clamouring for incisive, bone-deep examination of their work and its context, not satisfying themselves with butter-soft reviews.
It is difficult not to conclude that any discussion of contemporary Irish poetry which ignores these elements is no discussion at all. - Yours, etc,
FRED JOHNSTON, Circular Road, Galway.