Read, read, and read
by Ruth Padel
All responsible poets are passionate readers of other people's poems, both poems from the past and contemporary ones, poems now, today. You cannot write effective poems of your own unless you read and love poems by other people. Recently at Ledbury Poetry Festival, a boy asked Simon Armitage what was the best way to get ahead in poetry.
"Read," said Simon, "Read, and read."
You can't write a poem that works unless you engage with the universe of poetry as it is now and watch what contemporary poets are doing. Imagine a composer who loves Bach but has never heard Strindberg or Bartok. Why would you listen to that composer's music? He or she is not taking part in the dialogue with the past plus engaging with the modern world that is the art today. Would you eat the bread of a baker who had never tasted other people's bread?
But there are different kinds of readers, and reading too is an art you can grow in, develop, and get more from as you go.
I am delighted this site is starting up, to share readings of contemporary poems. Brilliant idea. The more readers of contemporary poetry there are, the better contemporary poetry will be, and we shall all - readers, writers, society - benefit from that.
Ruth Padel is a scholar and a poet and Fellow
of the Royal Society of Literature. She reviews
widely in UK and US, writes and broadcasts on
fiction, science, music and wildlife.
Her latest
book is The Poem and the Journey (2007).