Poetry Society: sign up for a better future

Like many poets, "Jackals are secretive and shy."

Well! You go away for a few days and it’s all happening at once. I know, I know, but it won’t go away.

Wednesday saw Judith Palmer’s official statement. This is on the Members’ blog that’s been set up to enable discussion, and the site now also features a statement from previous Chair Anne-Marie Fyfe, who was approached by the Board openly looking to “get something” on Judith. These two statements caused a groundswell of feeling which can be seen in the comments; it’s clear that people are still finding it hard to separate out the facts – pertaining to employment law, the Charities Commission, the duties and legal responsibilities of trustees – from their vague personal perceptions, often based at least partly on gossip and personality. But the brilliant thing is that if you regard the thing professionally, it is very clear. So there need be no confusion, and no arguing, and the Editor need not keep feeling as if she is under personal attack.

Alas, though: some of the comments go far beyond mere ignorance, into poison and ad hominem abuse; they lower the tone severely, and would not have been published at all on this blog.

There have been storms on Facebook over the week’s very one-sided press coverage. The Poetry Society itself strangely comes out of the press coverage almost as badly as Judith Palmer does; the line conveyed is that which we were given at the EGM last week by the trustees themselves, who are reported to “confirm” rather than “admit” things, and are nowhere said to be discredited – and nowhere is Fiona Sampson given anything like the vitriolic treatment Palmer is. This has led to speculations that the spin may have been bought with the £3,000 the trustees paid Colman Getty for “PR support.”

Today sees a very welcome shift, with an excellent letter in the Guardian from Judith Chernaik, who runs Poems on the Underground:

The dispute is not about money. It arises from a decision by the board of trustees, overriding acceptable employment practice, to change the terms of appointment of senior staff arbitrarily and without consultation. A small matter, perhaps, except to those involved. But it has been compounded by a series of ill-conceived defensive measures by the board, resulting in incalculable damage to staff and to the society.

Christina Patterson, who used to run the Poetry Society, has today published a lament for the whole situation which is like a poem in itself.

Silkworms Ink does a brilliant press roundup even with the trade journals thrown in: read to learn about how the story got skewed, and then unskewed. (I’d like to register my envy of their title, Broadsheets to the Wind.)

And now to the main point. George Szirtes has begun a petition to reinstate Judith Palmer into her job. Gillian Clarke, Carol Ann Duffy, Liz Lochhead and Jo Shapcott – two Poets Laureate, a Makar, and the PoSoc president who resigned – sign it under George, and Simon Armitage, Don Paterson and many others have also signed it – incuding people who are not members of the Poetry Society.

Judith Palmer has said she is willing to be reinstated (though if it were me you couldn’t pay me good money to go back there). The trustees were repeatedly asked at the EGM if they would reinstate Judith, and they repeatedly replied only that they are “In Discussion” with her. Since she’s not back yet, one can only assume they have not yet, in all these discussions, invited her to return.

This petition calls on the Board to do the decent thing and invite her back with the terms and conditions as of April 1st, as an attempt to wind the clock back and try to repair some of the damage all this has done.*

SO IF YOU HAVEN’T, PLEASE SIGN THE PETITION! IT’S ALL PEACE AND LOVE, BABY.

A better future for poetry means a better future for poets and readers

NOTE: When you sign, you MUST make sure your signature is VERIFIED. You need to register on the site, and then sign the petition; you’ll get a verification email to confirm your address, and once you’ve signed, you’ll get a page thanking you for signing. Until you’ve had both these things, your signature will be unverified, and won’t be counted.

* (This is clearly a peaceable, mild, very moderate, truce-building position for it to take: a writer was last week awarded £65,000 in damages for libel and malicious falsehood after a review by Lynn Barber, for far less personal insult than Judith Palmer has suffered at the hands of this Board. But that’s not my business.)

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