Time to Write: A Career in Poetry?

I've seen on my Facebook feed that some poets, even if previously published, now have difficulty finding publishers. Ageism, not being the flavour-of-the-month and disability, among other reasons, have been cited as causes. These weren't why I chose not to publish in the conventional way, but my commiserations go to those poets who'd like publication.

My reasons were different. In the 70s and 80s I did the usual rounds of belonging to a poetry group/workshop in London, Arvon courses, book launches, readings, reading poets old and new, networking, entering competitions, sending stuff off for publication and having some published in poetry mags., going to all kinds of poetry events until I realised what was involved in getting established. As I had a full-time job, was working at a part-time Ph. D. (never finished because I retrained in my 40s for a different career) and running a home, I simply hadn't the time to pursue another work strand, so backed out of the poetry scene, wrote and studied poetry for myself. 

I continued, though, to familiarise myself with what was going on in the poetry world, even to the extent of joining, in the late 90s, a couple or three of online poetry workshops. Those helped me improve technically, but I left on realising that, essentially, only poetry-by-committee was acceptable and that my work most often stood outside the crowd. After that, I continued to write on my own. Then, a few years ago and being semi-retired, I started my own poetry blog; that gives some satisfaction and an outlet for seeing my stuff in 'print,' as it were.

Now, the most I go for publicly is that maybe every two years or so, I'll enter a competition, knowing my work will never be selected. Few judges or publishers like polemical, political poetry and my other work doesn't and won't follow fashionable dictates. Too, I've always been a loner and am happy to be so. It doesn't matter and I'm neither bitter nor resigned, but just continue to write what I please as well as I can because I can't not write. A particular poem, once written, may go on my blog or back into the revision pile.

What does make me angry, though, is publication of other poets’ work turned down for reasons outlined in the first paragraph and more like them, e.g. racism, sexism, bias against working-class writers, non-recognition of provincial poets, none of which are acceptable, but are often the reality when taking part in what is essentially a competitive field. Of course there are individual and group solutions to this, finding like-minded groups of poets, starting up poetry magazines, protesting to the extent that the poetry world does hear about issues that rankle, and so on. I’ve seen a few changes over the years, but the fundamental issues haven't gone away; people have just hived off from the mainstream and done what they needed to do.

Often those fundamentals aren’t tackled because many publishers, judges, etc. may not question or even realise their own built-in biases. I’m aware, too, that it happens in other literary and arts genres than poetry. There’s not much that can be done about that in the short-term, except to keep raising the issues and protesting where possible. In the long-term it’s probably a matter of keeping poetry and its publishing life before the public’s eye, in the hope that minorities among poets become minorities no longer. Whatever, I shall just keep going my own way and be ever thankful for the people who do read my work.