Poetry London has launched a campaign to metamorphose National Poetry Day into National Poetry Week in 2004. (Some authorities say that there’s insufficient time for such an event to be properly organized for 2003.)

Initially the intention was to advocate a move to a National Poetry Month, but NPW appears to offer an easier transition. This campaign for a National Poetry Week has already gained widespread backing from scores of poets, poetry organizations, the Poetry Book Society and many poetry editors, some of whose statements of support are reported here.

Here are some of the primary reasons the UK needs a promotion/festival that spans at least a week:

• It will provide more time for the multitude of events across Britain that should be an important part of the national poetry festival — for example: poetry readings and workshops in libraries, primary and secondary schools, sixth form colleges, universities, reading groups, pubs, clubs, meeting halls and auditoriums, as well as poetry discussion groups, lectures and talks, and even poetry conferences. National Poetry Day crams too many overlapping and conflicting events into a 24–48 hour period.

• NPW can extend and broaden the festival geographically — many now see National Poetry Day as not only Londoncentric but even England-centric.

• A National Poetry Week can provide the impetus for action to secure the collaboration of the Arts Councils of Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland and England in order to deploy their combined financial resources and organizational skills. Heretofore National Poetry Day has been supported only by the Arts Council of England and some of the recipients of ACE funding.

• If all four arts councils become joint primary sponsors of National Poetry Week, it would make good sense perhaps to set up a new organization that will be responsible for the funding, planning and implementation of all aspects of NPW across the UK.

• In addition to the existing dominant focus on contemporary poetry, there will be greater opportunity to enlarge the festival to be more inclusive in terms of ethnic and cultural diversity, popular and ‘classic’ poetry, poetry by and for children, poetry in translation, poetry written in Britain in non-English languages, poetry by disabled people, performance poetry, etc. An Arts Council of England report recognizes the criticism that National Poetry Day is elitist.

• A week will provide more opportunities for marketing poetry — books may be sold at the events listed above — and most importantly, bookshops and other retailers will have adequate time to arrange promotions for poetry books, with special displays in stores and shop windows. The Academy of American Poets says that their National Poetry Month sells a lot of poetry books. Here, National Poetry Day sells nothing.

• A festival of a week or more will give organizers more room in which to attract sponsors, partners, stakeholders, poets, poetry readers and other participants. National Poetry Month in the USA enlists support and active participation by more than a hundred book publishers, magazines, newspapers, universities, companies and poetry organizations.

Here are the views of some leading poetry editors and the Director of the Poetry Book Society:

Michael Schmidt, Editor of Carcanet and PN Review: ‘National Poetry Day was a visionary initiative and worked well for a time. But its success began to tell against poetry. The media have decided that responding to this single occasion may be quite enough of a bow in poetry's direction. The book trade saw the period around National Poetry Day as “poetry time”, ordering for the occasion and, soon after, filing for returns. The attempt to widen public consciousness of poetry succeeded, and failed.

‘National Poetry Week would be a half-way house between National Poetry Day and, as the Americans have, National Poetry Month. It would allow for a wider range of events in and outside London. It might become possible to acknowledge the variety of poetries in Britain, existing not mutually in hostile camps but in a spectrum or continuum. There would still be a strong literary bias, no doubt, but also ample space for performance poetry and for exhibitions of textual poetry in galleries and libraries. In a week of National Poetry Days what is currently a peremptory gesture at the arts of poetry could begin to do justice to their variety and inclusiveness.

‘National Poetry Week would belong to poets, audiences and readers rather than to marketing departments. The “profile of poetry” will be enhanced if its features, which are poems, are given time and space in which to define themselves.’

Don Paterson, Poetry Editor of Picador: ‘I think a National Poetry Week would be a very good idea. I honestly don't believe the culture could support a National Poetry Month — poetry just can't claim that kind of centrality to people's lives, and I could see the whole thing grinding to an ignominious halt after three years of diminishing returns.

‘But NP Week could build on the considerable publicity that NP Day already generates — and allow a far more sophisticated picture of the art to be presented to the public; the message of NPD has become increasingly crude as more and more information has been crammed into a tiny time-window. It would also stop the whole thing from sounding like a silly novelty, which is just the way it's currently treated by the media — and the way in which its PR people then feel obliged to promote it. National Poetry Week would also be a way of giving some formal structure to what happens anyway, i.e. 250 poets trying to be in 12 places at once, and palming events promoters off with a reading the day after, or day before. Hopefully we'd see a bunch of small festivals starting up and down the country — and a real programme of reading and writing poetry in the schools for that week, which'd provide something substantial to build on for the rest of the year.’

Hamish Ironside, Sales and Marketing Manager of Anvil Press Poetry: ‘While one can only applaud any attempts to raise the profile of poetry, it has increasingly seemed that National Poetry Day has brought about a jostling for position among publishers, events organisers, and even the poets themselves, as all focus their sales and marketing efforts towards the country's designated 24 hour attention span. It is too brief a time to be productive for what is, by its nature, a genre that flourishes only in an unhurried environment.’

A full week if not a whole month in which to celebrate poetry would allow far greater freedom for arranging poetry tours and other events, or to attempt to achieve less perfunctory media coverage. Consequently, those working to promote poetry may be more likely to co-operate with each other than to compete.’

Stephen Stuart-Smith, Editor and Publisher of Enitharmon Press: ‘Many conversations and exchanges with American poets and publishers have convinced me of the benefits of National Poetry Month. The current concentration on a single day in October for celebrating poetry in the UK is typically timid: extending this to National Poetry Week seems a good compromise. It will help to avoid the congestion of events on National Poetry Day and give an opportunity for poetry initiatives to develop in many more areas of the country. Press coverage would be much wider and the possibilities of sponsorship greater. Poetry is so often overlooked: let's give it this chance to flourish.’

Clare Brown, Director of the Poetry Book Society: ‘The PBS has recently commissioned research into the current state of the poetry market, investigating issues such as design, pricing, bookshop supply, readership profiles and alternative methods of sale. The resulting report concludes that unless poets, publishers, retailers and related organisations change their approach to producing and selling poetry books, the gradual falling-off of poetry's readership will continue unabated.’

‘Setting aside a week to celebrate and promote poetry in a range of ways — but with book sales at its centre — would be an excellent first step towards the necessary paradigm shift. I can imagine a week of focused bookshop campaigns concentrating on special offers of carefully chosen contemporary poetry books, coinciding with, and backed up by, readings, workshops and targeted publicity around the whole country.’

‘The successes of National Poetry Day are over in a flash; being able to plan seven days of co-ordinated, concentrated activity would give the project time to grow and, vitally, to make a genuine difference to how much and how often poetry is read in the UK.’

Janet Fisher and Peter Sansom, Co-Editors of The North and Smith/Doorstop: ‘The Poetry Business endorses an extension of National Poetry Day into National Poetry Week because it would provide more time for events, increase diversity and allow for more intensive marketing of books.’

Robert Minhinnick, Editor of Poetry Wales: ‘Leaving aside that contentious word “national”, I agree in theory that the present Poetry Day should be extended to a week. More interest taken, more poetry bought and listened to and enjoyed? It seems straightforwardly sensible.’

‘And yet. More public readings? Don’t we have enough already? More work for burgeoning arts bureaucracies or simply more bureaucracy? But I mustn’t be cynical.’

‘A week is something the publishers might welcome, creating as it should an extended profile for poetry. And who would object to more poems on radio and in newspapers and at least a scattering of poems on tv, and on buses, beermats, supermarket trolleys and the rest of it? And a dedicated week of school visits for those writers who enjoy such things? And departed greats given their due? Nothing wrong with that.’

‘As long as poets are not paid to ambush commuters in trains and customers in cafes with unexpected and unprovoked orations, I think I might support the idea. (Yes, I took the money, gritted my teeth, and stood up… Never again.) And yes, you’re right, I’m hardly enthusiastic. A depressing image of “hyperactive mediocrities” dashing between radio station, Waterstone’s and the local comp keeps popping up. But I’m not hostile. Not hostile at all. In fact, what about “World Book Day” also becoming a week? Or what about a month, like they have in America? Look what it’s done for poetry there.’

Robin Robertson, Editor of Cape Poetry: ‘There is currently, in Britain, a Day for everything. However deserving the cause, the cause is lost in the velocity of our lives — appearing only, it seems, as a brief blip on the media screen. Poetry's own 24 hours — National Poetry Day — is regarded, amongst the writers I know, as a rather grim embarrassment. It celebrates precisely what should be under-played: the facile crowd-pleasing that has undermined poetry for years.’

‘The Americans, on the other hand, have, I think, been over-enthusiastic. Almost every new book of poetry published in the States appears to be published in April [National Poetry Month]. While there is certainly a momentum of interest, and strong sales for some books, not all the eggs in the basket get cooked. Nonetheless, the continuing existence of National Poetry Month is evidence that poetry is being taken seriously by publishers, booksellers and readers.’

‘One should not lose sight of the limits and contradictions of this enterprise: it is simply a promotional activity designed to bring more people into contact with a difficult but profoundly rewarding literary form. I am broadly in support of a National Poetry Week that honours the variety and vitality of poetry in these islands, but only if it allows for the complexity and seriousness of the art.’

Neil Astley, Editor of Bloodaxe: ‘My perspective on the question of National Poetry Day or Week or Month is that of a poetry publisher whose main concern is to broaden the readership for contemporary poetry by selling more poetry books.’

‘I'd also like to see a wider range of poets earning more from sales of their books and from doing more readings and residencies. America's National Poetry Month is much more successful on all those fronts than Britain's National Poetry Day. Our promotion gives a single day of blanket publicity to poetry, but it doesn't sell poetry books.’

‘The same narrow range of poets are asked to give readings in different parts of the country on the same day, whereas in America there is scope for a much wider range of writers to be involved in readings as well as short-term residences over a whole month. Radio and press coverage is also more effective in promoting interest in books and events over one to four weeks.’

‘American publishers sell many more copies of poetry books which are launched during National Poetry Month. In contrast, the Nielsen BookScan figures for October 2002 showed that publicity generated by National Poetry Day in Britain did not translate into extra sales. Sales out of the shops of poetry books during the week to 12th October were worth £158,000, up only slightly on the previous week, and down by £11,000 on the week of National Poetry Day in 2001.’

‘If the Forward and T.S. Eliot Prizes were organized around a National Poetry Week, that also would surely be more effective in promoting interest in contemporary poetry and sales of more poetry books.’

Please send books for review in Poetry London to:

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