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Poetry that does not ignore people
Legendary poetry publisher Smokestack Books will cease operations by the end of the year. JOHN GREEN looks back at its achievements
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POETRY is the most democratic form of literary expression — it only takes a pencil, a scrap of paper and/or a voice to create a poem of a few lines or stanzas. It won’t necessarily be good poetry but that is another issue.
Unfortunately, many people in Britain still today dismiss and ignore poetry. As socialist poet Adrian Mitchell memorably encapsulated it: “Most people ignore most poetry because most poetry ignores most people.”
Smokestack Books has spent two intensive decades trying to disprove this assertion. Its models were Curbstone Press based in the US and the French Le Temps des Cerises, publishers of “la poesie d’utilite publique” — poetry in the public interest.
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