Well, we are all reeling. On Friday, the UK poetry world – or the bits of it that could be in central London at 5pm on a weekday in the summer holidays – turned out for an extraordinary general meeting to discuss a matter that has become known as What the Hell Has Been Going On. But if you’re reading this, you probably know that.
And you’ve probably heard the rough outline: the trustees sprung a surprise announcement at the start of the meeting, that they plan to quit, en masse, at the AGM, which has been moved forward to September. This was not on the agenda, and had very much the feel of both too little, too late, and also a sop. A curve ball, designed to deflect the meeting from its course.
The meeting duly followed its course, with revelations that knocked the audience’s socks off: literally. There were socks flying everywhere. George Szirtes sums it up admirably on his blog. In fact, there are a number of blogs where you can get, from different angles, the story of the meeting:
The Silkworms Ink account is written direct from notes taken in the meeting by Phil Brown; he had intended to live-tweet, but found that there was no signal in the room; his notes are rather forensic, as a result.
Jane Holland transforms the meeting into a hopeful New Dawn for poetry, on her blog. We shall see how it comes to pass, but in the meantime it is a very good account of the afternoon.
Jon Stone, who wasn’t there, uses his Fuselit blog to sum up wittily ‘the super-condensed story (bearing in mind it does not give equal weight to the accounts of all sides)’.
And of course, the Poetry Society members’ site is a great resource, including as it does the official statement of Paul Ranford – now known as ‘Gregory Peck’ – the finance manager, who resigned from his job because of the mismanagement that was going on.
I can’t imagine how any of this would be the least bit edifying if one wasn’t already interested and/or involved. It just feels embarrassing.
The meeting itself was arduous, hot, angry, cathartically funny, buoyant, at times ugly, at times petty, a couple of times sad, mostly mystifying, and always nervewracking. The Baroque hands shook like leaves throughout.The vote of no confidence was carried 302 to 69, with 11 abstentions.
There were sorrows, as people I’m very fond of turned up ‘on the other side’ (as they might say at Hogwarts), and normal conversation was not possible. I’m hoping some of my friends, shocked by the really quite serious revelations of the meeting (disregard for management protocols, reckless and pointless expenditure, an attempt to raise an overdraft, inquiries into valuing the premises, a compelling account of vindictiveness from ex-Chair Anne-Marie Fyfe, a crashing disregard for people who go to the wrong parties, and a complete lack of apology for any of this), were among the 11 abstentions. Matters were confused by the fact that some people were there for the inchoate purpose of “supporting” the editor of Poetry Review, who had sent out an email asking people to defend her. But defend against what? By personalising the issue – by trying to make it about whether they thought she’d “done a good job on the magazine” or not, she took attention away from the serious issues at stake. To the point where if you pointed out that there were grave irregularities going on, it became tantamount to some kind of personal disloyalty.
And here we are. Board resigns in September. Three co-opted new trustees to help sort out the mess. No Arts Council funding till it’s sorted. And lots of people still quite cross. Will the Director be reinstated? Will the current Board continue their “negotiations” until it’s to late for her to sue for constructive dismissal? And what would happen if she did? Why did they not apologise? How DARE one of them – after what they’ve been found to have done – tell the press that they think poets are “rather bloody unbalanced, and they’re glad to be shot of it”?
And here’s a thing. They Board did tell us in the meeting that the press was present. Since then there have been two newspaper articles about the EGM. One, in the Guardian, is very sneery indeed, and appears to present the narrative that we were given at the EGM: that two staff members had a dispute that they, the Board, were at a loss to resolve, and so attempted a solution, which regrettably turned out to be unwise… It really did make me think. If two staff members in a place have a “dysfunctional working relationship,” and the solution arrived at by management (or indeed trustees) gives one of them exactly what she wanted, and publicly undermines the other one, that doesn’t look like an equitable attempt at reconciliation. It looks like one person being favoured.
The other one was in Today’s Times (of course, this article takes massive exception to the fact that the membership didn’t like the trustees running up £24K of bills with Harbottle and Lewis, who happen to represent News International as well). It goes one further and actually takes personal mocking potshots at the Director, leapfrogs over sneery straight to nasty (“poets” are”petty, small-minded, incompetent bickering fanatics”), and even manages to get the “sides” of the dispute mixed up.
Fun, then.
I almost don’t want to be writing about it, as it is so divisive, and it would be so much nicer to just get on (though Jon Stone addresses this question neatly, I think). It’s so tiring. And negative, you know, it’s summer, I’m already stressed out enough,I just want to relax a little, try and feel good about things…
It was bizarre to be waiting for my train at Victoria after all that on Friday and watching a giant screen with Sky headlines – only confusing soundless headlines – telling us that of course there are much bigger, more surreal, more horrifying things in the world than a lack of gravitas of the Poetry Society’s current trustees.
My dreams the night before had surged catastrophically around the death of Lucian Freud; the news from Norway was too horrific to take in that evening; and the next day as we tried to take it in, we read that Amy Winehouse had finished her six-year bender, and died. After that, having got my ducks in a row, I dreamt that I had to rescue baby ducklings in a sudden freeze, and there was a close-up angle-shot as one, no two, of them sank down into the blackness under the ice.
Sadly, I think it’s been far too easy for people like me watching from the internetular sidelines, to think “yes! a result! the wrongdoers are quitting!” without considering what it all means.
And what it does mean is___ what exactly? From my internetular sideline it’s going to take a long, long time for this to settle down. There does seem to have been a fair bit of bitterness, and with editors still in place and talk of directors being reinstated and of side-taking and breakages and unpleasantness… this doesn’t seem to be the end. It can’t be with all these unanswered questions.
Where I work (not a poetry society, as it happens, but a large not-for-profit registered charity) had similar issues with the high-heid-yins a few years ago. The only way it could’ve got better was for the big egos (no matter how good they were at their job) to move on. And they did.
As for the Guardian and the Times – pah! Anything that takes poets away from flower-sniffing, soft-focus hollywoodiana the better. I think.
s
(The more I consider the “bloody unbalanced” comment, the more outrageous it seems.)
Hi David, yes, the scary thing is this sense that it’s only just somehow beginning. There’s an AGM in September, and new trustees will have to be nominated and voted for.
Not sure it’s about getting the big egos out of their jobs; surely organisational procedure – I mean in its most idealistic mode – exists as a check-&-balance, to enable things to carry on much as before. And of course, making it “about” anybody in particular means that you will have polarised factions etc, rather than a group of people looking calmly at what happened and what they want to happen. I raised three kids: I know.
Good piece Katy, you’ve highlighted vital points, especially the ‘personalisation’ which has taken away from the serious matter of the finances and poor management. One bit I’m not clear on though ‘a compelling account of vindictiveness from ex-Chair Anne-Marie Fyfe’ was Anne-Marie the vindictive one, or did she give the compelling account of vindictiveness by others?
Thanks Hazel, I’ll edit: of course I mean that Anne-Marie gaev a compellign account of vindictiveness by the Board, when they were trying to penalise the outgoing director for having spoken to Anne-Marie – or something, the details are hazy in my memory.
Dear Katy
On Sunday I was reading The Sunday Times’ Leader column (as is my wont) when I came across the following: ‘Michael McIntyre should consider himself lucky that he is not a poet. Far from wandering lonely as clouds and getting over-excited by doffodils, poets are a cut-throat bunch who are quite prepared to kick a rival in the rhyming couplets. Elections to the post of Oxford University poetry professor have been notoriously dirty, and now comes a dispute at the Poetry Society, where friction between two officials has ballooned. After a fractious meeting, a weary trustee remarked: “Quite a lot of poets seem to be rather bloody unbalanced.” But ’twas ever thus.’
The question we poets have to ask ourselves is whether terrible publicity is any improvement on zero publicity!
Best wishes from Simon
I didn’t see the Times article – can’t bring myself to read Murdoch owned media at the mo – but the Guardian article was disappointingly flippant and diminished the seriousness of the issues.
I expected better of the Guardian (perhaps naively).
Are poets regarded by the media as inherently ridiculous?
Inherently? Apparently.
Whereas in fact, corruption and foolishness are rife throghout humanity, and in this case it was the Board which misused funds, not the “poets.”
Katy,
This non-blogger has been wandering around online, despondent and angry, bleating about things like: where is the charity commission in all this? Why wasn’t Director (and Ranford) issued with apology and invited back, rather than meeting allowing them to return to ostensible negotiations which seem to involve a return to exactly situation she left? (Surely we need people like them.)
Then there’s the media publishing wholesale the Board’s own version which presents a kind of “cat-fight” between two women in marked b contrast to the Board’s protected by anonymity which I can’t help speculating is the kind of publicity presentation, like the articles, that the may well have been the fruits of the ill-spent money I understand went on PR as well as lawyers. Now THERE are stories for the press.
Who fed the press remark about unbalanced poets? I’ve not read Times article as don’t much fancy handing over a pound to Times for privilege and when I goggle all portals lead through the Murdochs. An Indie article allows space for comments from the peanut gallery, which I guess includes the hoi-polloi members of the Society.
Katy, to use another’s words, your blog and words on the subject are a beacon – thanks.
Perhaps someone who was at the EGM and more involved than myself would like to getin touch with the Guardian’s Response column, about doing a piece that would shed light than their recent feature did on the real issues.
They can be contacted at response@guardian.co.uk
All these articles show that there is deep fear of poets and poetry. They can’t understand it so they want to laugh at it. Every approach from the broadsheets seems to be driven by a desire to sum up by saying that a poet is as mad as a bag of spiders. Well, my opinion of journalists has plummeted this week after these incredibly lazy, unfair, sneering articles that personalise the debate.This crass invasion won’t help the recovery of the named individuals either. I can’t imagine how the director would want to come back now. I used to be rather old-fashioned, got my news from the broadsheets. I know where I will go in future to find intelligent properly researched reports – the blogs written by clear-eyed poets like Katy Evans-Bush, George Szirtes, Jane Holland et al. You may not be able to get news from poems but it looks like you can certainly get it from the poets. Without their voices this week, I would feel like dying miserably.
As a journalist and a Poetry Society member who attended the EGM and blogged about it, I’m as disappointed as Martina with the press reports and agree with you Katy that attempts by various parties to personalise the issues haven’t helped. There must have been some kind of HR situation – or at least a perception of one – but we only have the trustees’ word for it that it was bad enough to consult lawyers, let alone expensive ones. In any event, as Kate Clanchy’s email this morning says, the problem lies not so much with any individuals but more with the board’s approach to management generally. This would have been clear to anyone at the meeting, regardless of whether they understood the issues or not. That is why I voted in favour of the no-confidence motion and think the election of a new board can’t come soon enough.
PS
In response to Christine Michael’s remark that “the problem likes not so much with any individuals but more with the board’s approach to management generally” surely it’s the Director’s job to manage, which is partly the point here. The Board’s actions seem to have obstructed this, hence the resignation.
I think the press reports focus on poets because the more accurate ‘charity board turn potentially difficult situation into farcically bad situation through series of acts of stupidity’ isn’t interesting or unusual. But usually the problem for charities is either corruption or negligence so the Poetry Society board have offered an interesting twist in creating this catastrophe by actively carrying out (apparently well intentioned) actions not logically within their remit.
I’ve been disappointed (and slightly baffled) to see people I like and respect apparently arguing that the fact the editor of Poetry Review is nice person who does a good job of editing the magazine is somehow an excuse for the board’s actions. Based on the evidence, these points – while possibly true – are completely irrelevant.
The bad management – complete with case of constructive dismissal so blatant that if action went ahead the case could actually end up in a textbook – has nothing specific to do with poetry. That said, the effort to call the board to account – EGM etc. – is the kind of action that is partly based on the passionate engagement which you get from poets. I don’t think the members of local voluntary sector umbrella body would be interested enough to sack the board in similar circumstances – although they’d be equally right to do so.
See my suggestion above. I’ve actually contacted the Guardian ‘Response’ people myself now. Don’t know if they’ll get back to me, though I have written for them once or twice before…
Part of me wants to say, “That’s what you get, poets, for trying to hang about in societies.” Part of me wants to allude to the Eatanswill election in *Pickwick*. Part of me thinks there must be an appropriate stanza of “Under Which Lyre” to quote. And, having read the comments, part of me wants to say, “Why, yes, poets *are* as mad as a bag of spiders.”
One of these days I’ll have to integrate all these parts. In the meantime, I think I’ll just go work on a poem, which is what poets should be doing instead of going to meetings.
Richard. “Poets” do have day jobs, you know. Lots of them do freelance work with kids, say, in schools, and delivering all kinds of projects, in all kinds of institutions and other arenas, funded by the Poetry Society. Say.
The PS also administers the National Poetry Competition, which lots of poets like to enter.
It also publishes the quarterly Poetry Review, the flaship poetry magazine in the UK.
It has also even been suggested, with the Poetry Book Society losing all its funding, that the PS might be well placed to administer the TS Eliot Prize as well – making it not only the single most powerful gatekeeper in this small market, but the gatekeeper of about half of it. In light of the current scenario, I’d say we need some strengthening of its probity and conflict of interest principles before that becomes a good idea.
It receives public and other monies, with strict accountability requirements attached, and membership fees from its over 4,000 members, and is a registered charity with a mission statement relating to educational work. The trustees hold the PS in trust for its members, who include poets, educationalists and teachers, librarians, students, academics, and readers.
I know you like taking the contrarian stance. But if you were a member of a legal charity working with young people and awarding prizes and enabling careers, etc, the prominent one of its kind in the land, and then its trustees endangered its daily activities and brought your whole profession into disrepute, I suspect you’d want to intervene.
Mad as spiders, eh? I’m not saying loads of them aren’t, but no more than the teachers and shopkeepers I’ve known – but this little peccadillo isn’t where it’s all been brought out.
Dear Katy
I am both a poet and an (ex) teacher which I suppose must make me as crazy as a sack of tarantulas (Rusty certainly wouldn’t disagree!) I’ve phoned up the Dylan Thomas Centre and got the skinny on your eagerly anticipated performance.
Best wishes from Simon
Oh, I didn’t mean they should be sacked! Just that the natural order was that the Big Egos (I feel it should be fully capitalised) left… Proper procedures exist to make sure that organisations are personality proof – but those personalities that want to test those procedures may find they have to leave on their own. That’s what happened with us.
The Board have failed their own test of the procedures, so goodbye to them.
And further to spiders:
- percentage of poets who are as mad as spiders ~ x%
- percentage of people who are as mad as spiders ~ ?
I’d imagine it might be x% as well… but how mad *are* spiders? Perhaps they’re not mad at all…
Bull’s eye again from the Ms Baroque. I am sure David is right and that the idea of crazed poets squabbling makes better copy but as Katy points out there are wider issues, repercussions for the future of poetry. At the centre of this affair is an appalling case of bullying where most of the main players weren’t even poets. The fact that the newspapers have added to the bullying is deeply depressing. Today I read this comment from Lyn Coffin on Fred Johnston’s blog, Why Poets Squabble:
‘Fiction writer Richard Ford and I used to talk about the “fact” that fiction writers are, in general, easier to get along with and “nicer” people than poets, which seemed to both of us to be true.’
So a very balanced view there from fiction writers! Well, some poets write fiction too as well as doing a host of other jobs as Katy has pointed out. Maybe if people could just accept that fiction writers as well as poets and even journalists are human beings, this human mess could be sorted less painfully.
Actually that quote really annoys me. Poets are writers.
That there *is* a Poetry Establishment in the first place can’t possibly be a good thing. Poems should be written by dotty vicars who sleep in their coffins and drunken louts in minor Welsh towns and Latin secretaries to brutish usurpers and bank clerks, and their friends and patrons should be prosperous amateurs with lots of time and money on their hands. To the extent they are beholden to Big Poetry, they are in bed with Calliope Sachs, investment bankers to the bards. Those with their hands on the Poetry Pursestrings will manage verse no better than they manage the other vital social services.
And pigs fly. And virtue is its own reward.
Katy, can you please run to be on the board? I think you’d be bloody marvellous at it.
Yes, I’ve been seething all day…had to share it before my bag of spiders burst.
And songwriters are poets too, btw.
Dear Katy
As a drunken lout in a Welsh village, I couldn’t agree with Richard more – especially concerning the British Poetry Establishment!
Best wishes from Simon
I’m marveling at the success of the outgoing Poetry Society board at uniting lots of people who usually don’t like each other very much in opposition to their actions. Would it be wrong to have a vote for the two names we’d least expected ever to appear together on the same petition? Obviously it would be entirely wrong. As you were.