It’s no go the LitFest, it’s no go up in Lancaster,
though they’ve built an auditorium (still quite wet, the plaster)
a bar, a bookshop, office space … well, they won’t need wheelchair access.
All we want is a million quid and here’s to the Olympics.
London’s Enitharmon Press was founded in 1967,
but David Gascoyne and Kathleen Raine are writing now in heaven,
with UA Fanthorpe, John Heath-Stubbs; dead good dead poets all.
The only bloody writing now’s the writing on the wall.
It’s no go the national art, it’s no go cake with icing.
All we want are strategic cuts, it’s no go salami slicing.
It’s no go the Poetry Trust, it’s no go in East Suffolk;
Aldeburgh’s east of Stratford East. As Rooney says, oh f-fuck it –
because it’s no go First Collection Prize, it’s no go local writers.
We’ve been asked to pull the plug, the rug, by coalition shysters.
National Association of Writers in Education?
No way, NAWE, children and books, the train’s leaving the station.
It’s no go your poets in schools, it’s no go your cultures.
All we want is squeezed middles and stringent diets for vultures.
It’s no go the pamphlet, the gig in Newcastle no go.
All we want is a context for the National Portfolio.
Three little presses went to market, Flambard, Arc and Salt;
had their throats cut ear to ear and now it’s hard to talk.
They remember Thatcher’s Britain. Clegg-Cameron’s is worse.
Deathbyathousandcuts.co.uk, the least of which is verse.
It’s no go the avant-garde, it’s no go the mainstream.
All we want is a Review Group, chaired, including recommendations.
Stephen Spender thought continually of those who were truly great;
set up the Poetry Book Society with TS Eliot, genius mate.
But it’s no go two thousand strong in the Queen Elizabeth Hall.
Phone a cab for the Nobel laureates as they take their curtain call.
It’s no go, dear PBS. It’s no go, sweet poets.
Sat on your arses for fifty years and never turned a profit.
All we want are bureaucrats, the nods as good as winkers.
And if you’re strapped for cash, go fish, then try the pigging bankers.
– Carol Ann Duffy
Last week, or maybe the week before, the Arts Council announced swinging cuts to the arts budgets. Projects across the country will be forced to close, including some regional theatres.
One such casualty is The Poetry Book Society, which will lose all its Arts Council funding from April next year.
The Poetry Book Society is a widely respected and internationally unique organisation that selects outstanding poetry collections for readers and libraries, and which also – through its own bookshop sales – is an immensely significant source of revenue for poetry publishers, and so also for poets.
Some months back the ConDem government announced that funding of Bookstart would cease.
Libraries? Libraries are being closed too!
Cuts to the arts is part of the slash and burn of public services by the ConDem government. Shock Doctrine with an exaggerated Budget Deficit being uses as the excuse.
- Sir Patrick Stewart leads actor protest over arts cut
- The Poetry Book Society needs your help!
- Bookstart
- A government that promised a Big Society is taking steps that will destroy a small one
- Bread and Roses
