| Poetry’s Lost Generation: Why We Need Salt Publishing
Salt Press are an independent family company dedicated to new poetry. You may not be surprised to learn that they have had a tough time recently. There was the Arts Council funding bomb that went off last year then the amazing troop-rallying and viral marketing campaign to buy ‘just one book’ complete with save-the-polar bear-style advert. But now they’re back with re-structured vengeance. They have just launched a children’s imprint: http://saltpublishing.com/kids/ which is a bright, energetic, fun poetry resource for parents and teachers as much as children. There are tips on how to engage children in poetry, downloadable audio recordings of everything from Keats and Blake to new poets. In short, Salt have provided the creative artillery to get kids interested in poetry. And why does this matter?
Director Chris Hamilton-Emery said ”We felt we had an obligation to find new ways to take poetry to children, to help develop the audiences of the future”
Now, I’ve been to two readings in the last week. One was in a North London bookshop, the other in a grungy North London Pub. Not surprisingly, the grungy pub was full of young, grungy, pint-drinking creatives. However, at the bookshop reading, the audience was very clearly split between cultured middle-aged middle class and several decades down, young, trendy twenty-somethings. What happened to that middle generation? What went wrong between our parents who grew up in the 60s and 70s believing a tatty notepad full of creative scrawlings was a key component to any look and today’s Pete Dohertyesque Romantics who are equally fond of tatty notebooks and just like their forefathers will probably have traces of drugs, black and white photos, gig stubs (and worse) in theirs. Can we blame the 80s? Did the explosion of bright, shinny, mass-produced, electronic art leave the simpering poets in the dark? Whatever the reason, we cannot let it happen again.
This post was submitted by Belledelivre.
