It seems to have been a little quiet on the discussion boards of late; perhaps everyone is away enjoying the delights of a fairly typical British summer . . . ho-hum. I thought I would post something which, no doubt, will prove to be controversial and divisive (just for a change.)

There have been many threads which have simply boiled down - or even boiled dry in many cases, to a matter of taste. Taste interests me. I know there are many out there (well at least one I can think of, and he will remain nameless) who would say that popularity is no barometer of quality. I can agree, at least partially, with some of this sentiment. "Lowest common denominator" and such. Nonetheless taste is, I feel, an important factor when considering what we both read - and write. By that I mean both our own taste and that of any potential audience/readership.

Previous threads and the contents of the WOL blogs illustrate that our tastes vary very widely in every aspect of poetry. This is surely a good thing, catering for the broadest possible spectrum of work and, hopefully, audience.

("Great! But where the f**k is this going you moron?" I hear.)

OK. Here it comes . . .

WOL, judging by the front page, has been going since 2007. (And here's the entirely hypothetical question posed in order to gauge the taste of contributors/readers.)

If WOL were to put together an anthWOLogy of everything that has ever appeared on these hallowed (hollowed?) pages, what would you choose as your top 3 poems - and more importantly, why?

RULES: (Yes, there have to be rules - well one at least!)

No choosing your own work - and that includes those with multiple personae!

Now who will be first to risk having their "taste" publicly ridiculed flogged and pilloried . . . ? And, before anyone asks, I am reserving the right to reserve my right until a time I feel is appropriate . . .

There are many poets I have read over the years on WOL, and many poems that have touched me in one way or another, yet none have touched me so deeply as Peter Crompton’s body of work. There are far too many favourites to mention, but two that I read very early on are 'Dreams of leaving' and 'The ingredients for the disturbed.' His writing is beyond incredible, touching, observant, funny…

Blimey Anthony! Are you expecting us to go through the whole WOL back catalogue and read about a squillion poems? I know the weather is too horrible to go out and do much else but life is too short - though it seems very long at times!

Having said that, I guess any poem worth its salt would stay in the mind to be dredged up. This is a jolly good thread! ("Neil" would get one of my votes of course! Though that is a lot down to the very atmospheric audio - I think it is that which has made it stay in my mind. So would it still count?)

I suspect that not many names will come out of this thread. I like work that moves me or makes me laugh so it has to have a degree of humanity about it - and it doesn't have to be perfect for me to prefer it to the work of some more 'hallowed' poets.

I can see why Francine likes Pete Crompton's stuff. It has a very natural 'untampered with feel' to it. I suspect he is one of those lucky poets who just talks poetry naturally. I''ve heard him compere and the words seemed to just flow in the same way. He is a very natural performance poet - but his stuff works on page too.

If you are looking for someone who refines those words more on the page, I love Louise Fazakerley's poetry - also Mel Rees. They don't tend to post much on here - but they are lovely to read and listen to.

There are quite a few comic poets who perform brilliantly at the Tudor - I hate to single them out for comedy though cos it looks like I don't rate their serious stuff, which I do - but in different measures.

It goes without saying that I love your stuff Anthony. 'Lifelines' is my favourite poem on this site - I just wish you'd start writing again!

There are plenty more names I can think off but I don't want it to start sounding like a back patting exercise for friends.

What kind of poetry do I love? Poetry that isn't pretentious, that doesn't try to hard. Poetry that is pleasant to the ear also.

Interesting thread by the way :)

As someone who has often felt on the edge of things because I'm the kind of writer/reader who likes the 'experimental/non-mainstream/avant garde/just plain weird,' I do feel taste is a really flexible thing.

I used to go to poetry groups where everyone used to enthuse about, say, Simon Armitage or Carol Ann Duffy. And that's fine; but then they'd ask me what I was reading and I'd mention some obscure American or British modernist and they wouldn't know what to say because they'd never heard of them.

So I'd feel like a sore thumb everywhere, until I discovered the avant garde scene beginning to happen (with early readings by Allen Fisher and Scott Thurston at the Thirsty Scholar) and began to feel there might actually be a place for me too.

I've no idea why my taste is for what some of you will probably call 'pretentious'; but there you go. Sometimes, I get grouchy when I hear people making dismissive remarks about the stuff I love; sorry about that, but maybe it'll be good if you remember that sometimes what you hate somebody else loves.

I'm not altogether ill at ease with the idea that not everyone will like poetry. 'Course, I want to sell more books; but if you don't like poetry, there's always novels, or history, or books about cats. Then you can love football too. I like jazz as well as poetry; another minority sport I fear but there you go.

Hi Steven,

I apologise if you thought I was having a "pop" at you. The type of anthology I had in mind was an eclectic one - with something for everyone. I would be fascinated to know what you would choose to include. It would be fairly boring if the contents weren't a little surprising and challenging.

Hi Francine!

Where've you been?

Hi Steve B.

RULE 2 - No taking the p**s!

Hi Isobel/Ann,

How easy it is to demonstrate that some people have no/lousy taste!


I know it's a hard question, and I haven't nominated anything yet, but a WOL webpage/showcase of "The Best of WOL" would be a great advert and shop-window. But how to select? . . .

I think many poets are moody, mercurial creatures. The type of comments they leave on poems and discussion threads are very much down to how they are feeling on any particular day.

One day they may manage to contain their exasperation at what they consider to be other people's bad taste - another day they'll let rip and say exactly what they hate about a poet/poem - and at other times they may play at being holier than though - the old 'live and let live' chestnut.

I never felt compelled to contribute to this thread - it just interested me and I liked to read what other people thought - whether or not I agreed with it.

PS I never suggested that experimental poetry is pretentious -the stuff I've heard so far just isn't my bag. There is plenty of poetry that isn't my bag.

When I said I liked poetry that wasn't pretentious - I meant poetry where the soul and meaning wasn't sacrificed to incomprehensible imagery/allusion. Clearly that is a very personal view. I haven't named or shamed anyone though so I should be able to express it.

I've watched this thread carefully to see who would be nominated to get into the anthWOLogy, as the question asks.

No-one it seems. Most of the comments seem to be heading down the line of veiled criticism/preferences/umbridge taking route.

I am always intrigued and very often surprised at the feedback that I get on my work and from whom the feedback comes.

I subconsciously grade my work and thus have higher hopes for some pieces than others. There may be just one or two lines that I consider "inspired" (in my personal parlance of course) and always wait to see if they are picked up by reviewers.

How does this link to the thread of quality? Well I am often bemused at the reaction that I get from what I consider to be my "quality" pieces as opposed to the stuff that I think less of.

I'm afraid Anthony, you have asked a seemingly impossible question!

Answering your question however. I would vote for anything by Marianne Daniels.

Best of luck,

Graham

Anthony & Isobel -

I wasn't thinking that anyone was having a 'pop' at me. My post was really about perceptions. Nobody intends any offence, but if your taste is minority, then even if nobody says anything, you still feel like an outsider. If everybody in the room is telling you how wonderful Abba is and actually you'd rather listen to Extreme Noise Terror, you'd feel the outsider too.

Not that there's anything wrong with Abba. Just that there's a place for Extreme Noise Terror too.

And to answer the question, I'd take Winston Plowes' found poems into my anthology.

You can be extremely nice at times Steven :)

I was in a grumpy mood yesterday and my comment relfected that - I felt like rattling your bones :) Now I feel like I would like to sit down with you, have a nice cup of tea and be taught how to write experimental and challenging poetry...

I think we should all be in this anthology - everyone who makes this site the rich tapestry that it is!

John Coopey's singular work deserves an anthology of its own so I have to go for the following:
In Her Passing by Richie Muster...touching, deeply felt vignette about death. I copied this for my own pleasure
- though that is an uncomfortable word in this context.
Handing Back by JF Keane...this was a difficult choice from one who has craftsmanship and understanding in spades! A class act.
Ragged Beauty by Ian Gant...ditto...a heartbreaking observation of hard times and the shrug of painful indifference.
All are worthy of inclusion in any anthology in my
opinion.
MC

Funnily enough this one has stuck with me for a couple of years:

http://writeoutloud.net/public/blogentry.php?blogentryid=11301

Alvin Guinessberg's What Billy Collins taught me.

Yes - he was a real character - such a shame he disappeared.

Or maybe he was an 'unreal' character. I didn't really care which - he just livened things up at times.

Anthony,

This seems to have died a bit (folk are a bit too uneasy?)

Before it disappears I`d like to take the opportunity to mention a poem by Alan Morrison called `Orgasm`. A powerful soul-and-body
felt poetic treatment of what must be the most difficult subject to treat seriously in all poetry.

I always regret not commenting on it because of a stupid quibble I had with the last line. (more fool me)

Now everyone is watching th'olympics and barbecuing in the rain, so I guess there are few visitors to the discussion pages at present. Either that, or, as Harry suggests, folks are a litte reticent to air their personal tastes in public.

In all seriousness I would like to see a "best of the best" of WOL, even if it was only online. And not a selection chosen by one person, or even an esteemed panel, but up there because the work was rated by contemporaries and those who frequent the site.

I concur that trawling the blogs right back to WOL's inception is a mammoth task, but there are some poets whose work we gravitate towards - well I do anyway. Whether it's some sympathetic resonance of like minds or just those snippets of language that provoke an almost Pavlovian response, their writings poke, prod and even sometimes caress us to a shared moment of understanding.

Yes, I did set a difficult question; is there any point in setting easy ones? And no, I don't really have any definitive answers myself, simply because there is shedloads of brilliant work I've been able to read on WOL (thanks Julian and the team.) But, I would still like to see some highly (peer) rated poems from WOL all in one place.

My recommendations (not choices necessarily - more like signposts might include:

http://www.writeoutloud.net/public/blogentry.php?blogentryid=27362

http://www.writeoutloud.net/public/blogentry.php?blogentryid=8709

and other works (far too difficult to choose) from the list of blog entries on these profiles:

http://www.writeoutloud.net/profiles/rachelmcgladdery

http://www.writeoutloud.net/profiles/isobel

http://www.writeoutloud.net/profiles/johncoopey

There are others, far too numerous to mention, and if the discussion continues I may return to add to my list. It's your shop, what are you going to put in the window?

Regards,
A.E.

mm tast...mmm...

i would suggest having an announced blog your best month, then print every poets work that blooged that month. one poem each.

my fave WOL writers are usually listed on my profile page.

if there were an anthology i would like to see it represent the wide cross sections of poets style.
in reality it would probably end up consisting of people who are in a wol contact network to enable the project and therefore end up a bit cliquelike.

i believe all poetry subjective and as is pointed out in the tread, writing os variable for people day to day. creating definitive poetry is somewhat a pressure...

pete is a natural poet, lots of people are. we are all actors to a certain degree.i like reading poetry conjured by people who struggle to read and write. i am all about content and concept. taste is a personal thing and although affected through cultural influences i refuse to have taste dictated to me through fashion, be that manchesters finest, wols finest or anyothers finest thing my natural reaction is to avoid it like the plague.

graham if you like marianne s work you could get a copy of our book misry begins at home published couple years ago x

So far, I seem to be the only "poster" to comply with the terms of reference set out by AE.
Do WOL contributors suffer poetic memory loss to the extent that they are quite unable to recall just three poems that stayed in the mind long enough to audition for an "anthology"?
Or is it a case of not wanting to offend fellow (perhaps friends) scribblers/performers by the act of omission?

Maybe it's a mixture of both those things MC. Or perhaps the majority of poets are just non compliant?

When you analyse the discussion threads it is a very small minority that actually get involved, so perhaps no surprise that an even fewer number should contribute to this, where you have to put some effort in and trawl back to find poems.

I'm going to do some head scratching. A lot of Louise Fazakerly's stuff has been removed. That's the problem - as soon as a poet starts to see a career in poetry, they remove it.

I really enjoyed Ann Foxglove's Coramandel - more than when I read it originally - perhaps my tastes have changed. I really liked one she did about Whales making love also - it would take me ages to find it though.

When I first joined the site I read one by Julian Jordan about the welsh landslide disaster that wiped out a whole school. It was very moving.

In fact, when I think of any of the poets on here, I can think to a favourite poem of theirs. It would be great if we could do this anonymously - I could write a big long list of favourite poems for every prominent poster. Publicly you just get hung for the ones you forgot to add to the list - or accused of cliqueness.

i dont see whats wron with pointing out the clique nature of ANY organisation. cliques form naturally everywhere..its not an accusation its just fact. As you rightly point out isobel only a small minority will post to this thread and therefore discussing personal taste as a way to define wols finest poetry i believe a waste of time.
i am intereested in your s and other writers tastes but i find all that stuff on the comments boards.

this is my opinion for what its worth

i used to drive past that welsh village every year wih my family as it was on the way to my dads family. tragic tragic thing always haunted and sad...

im trying to make the point that because there are so many wonderful poems to be found on wol, picking a few is a futile exercise and i believe goes against the ethos of the blog.

you couldnt include everyone or it would be a matter of setting up a parallel site with all the same work on it..haha pointless, right am off to read more poetry.

The Aberfan mining disaster moved me to write a poem. I think I was 9 years old or so, yet I can still remember the opening lines .....

Wonder why it took me many decades before I wrote another poem?

"In Aberfan in South Wales
Rain came down in pails.
It caused a mountain of coal
To bury heart and soul.
I don't know how to express myself
for those poor people buried as if the continental shelf."

i love the poem joy..last two lines particularly x

ste walling....i would rather extreme noise terror to abba any day...i love that you know who they are. i cant go past ENT at the hospital without thinking about them ;) a place for everything indeed.

Then I can only follow up my last post by saying a heartfelt "thank you" to the editors and publishers whose anthologies introduced me to so much poetry that wasn't included in the school syllabus or the "in-crowd" output of minority interests located in later years. I would have missed so much that has stayed with me like the company of lifelong friends.

LOL Steve - 'shit into gold' - that comment really made me laugh - but it is true - how you perform stuff really makes a difference. You could give a train time table to some poets and it would sound poetic...

To return to the rest of what you were saying Steve - I do think personal taste can change with time, mood, hormonal swings even...

Sometimes there is no explaining why you like a poem. It doesn't fit any parameters of the kind of poem you normally like - but you just like it.

I do miss Poem of the Month that we used to have on here. It used to cause no end of grief - but it was also interesting. Perhaps there is an argument for having a featured poem of the month - chosen from all the blogged/profiled poems and voted on by site members?

Won't be around to pick up on any responses to that. Am on holiday for a week from tomorrow. Got my buckets and spades packed - don't think I'll bother with the suncream - it's sunny old Cornwall this year :)

Bring back Poem of the Month ! vote here NOW !

I vote we remove all voting requests from this...oh never mind

;) @ tommy..

i have enjoyed the poem of the month..i would be happy to partake in that and vote for faves, lighthearted and encouraging.

i think mc has a point for praising the published poetry book of course. anthologies are a great thing, its all about that for me, loads of wol poets go on to collaborate and make great books, collections of poetry, of course!
I dont like the idea of seleting 'best ofs' neither do i like or take part in slams. but again that is my personal taste for page poetry. performance poetry is a different art we know this..

i do believe taste can be aquired and disposed of ste...i like to uphold the belief that i stay true to my perceptions of taste being formed through my own unique life experience and culture...we are all influenced from the external. i believe we can also exert influence upon it. i feel uncomfortable around the popular and i am naturally competetive. it is a trait i make effort to squash as it is stifling.

i would be much happier to create new themes for collecting poetry based on shared ideas, styles.
i might plug my book again :D the making of misery was a great experience made rich by the smilarities between its writers. we could have a clash of the titans book with mismatching authors and diffident themes? :)

I really don't like having to 'diagnose' a poem to death, or make extensive analyses of imagery to see how they contribute to the whole. I do enjoy 'difficult' poetry, but mainly I want a work to pique my interest to view life with a new eye or, at least, with a refreshed vision. For me, the type of poem is immaterial. If I find universality and basic poetic skills, then I am open to any genre.

mm...maybe we could look out of our respective windows and watch an Olympic event pass by and write a verse on it...we could arrange them in the order that they are spied. We could then print a copy and then bury the fuckin' thing in some fucker's garden or soft-spot and have fuckin' done. (oh! wrong subject)

Pleasant, Tommy. Pleasant.

Tommy, I have revamped my comments. You make a good point.

not a bad idea tommy...maybe we could bury the poems, then go burn down a library and pull the whole stint off as an attempt to get on the new guinness book of records mp3 list as most futile exercise in history??

only an idea, cant pass it off as poetic ramblings however as it doesnt rhyme :(

Don't burn books Bond...never burn books- nor the buildings that house them.

honestly i would never dare...

i like being an irish mountain horse. ..they too are known to write shite occasionally :D niegh x

luuurrrve in x

I enjoyed your encapsulation of each poets essence, Steve. A wicked thought occurred to me (maybe cos it's the midnight hour) I wondered if a person's poetic essence could bear any correlation to other more personal areas of their life...

I particularly enjoyed Nick Coleman's 'unusual and powerful take on the English pastoral'

also Winston's experimental

In fact you can't knock precision, honesty and plenty of wordplay also.

What a rich and diverse site this is. I like the way people disappear and then re-appear. Much like an episode of Lost, you never know who is going to pop up.

Not wishing to cast aspersions at all - but I have always admired the brevity of your work. In very few words you manage to sum up so much. For a poet that is a great skill :)

Thank you for recognising humanity and humour in my work. I would happily have that as my epitaph :)

I too thought Steve's list was remarkable, and showed how carefully he reads other people's work, probably more so than anyone else on this site - and not just because he mentioned me! Thanks, Steve, for your generosity and candour, one of the key things that helps to keep this site alive. Of course, you're quite right about the shite, too ...!

We seem to have strayed a long way from A.E.'s request for "your top 3 poems" (for an anthology)...up to the date of his post. But it is worth considering that a good editor is vital to any satisfying (and lasting) project of this kind and "cruel to be kind" is sometimes an editor's essential if unspoken guide to promoting a chosen selection. The operative word in an anthology is "edit", so that the content rewards
possession and, more importantly, keeping. My three chosen poems are listed above. I haven't changed my mind.

Although I love the inclusive nature of your list Steve, I can appreciate what MC is saying here. I imagine that within your list of poets, there are some who you would rate higher than others. An editor has the job of doing just that - sometimes to the point of excluding work. Most editors are faceless though - so they don't have to publicly account for their preferences.

I would find it hard choosing 3 poems. I'd end up chosing a lot from the same poets. And then I'd have the problem that certain poems have now been removed from the site.

I don't write shite, show me where my shite is, I don't need a badge of approval, ''I need no stinkin' bahjezz'' bang bang bang. PS you missed in your summery of my work deep troubling philosophical abstractions and poignant, wistful sketches. i await your retraction. (guns cocked)

Steve - surely the point is for each of us to be our OWN editor...to have the strength of conviction in a difficult task: something that editors (often much maligned) face when employed for the purpose in the world of publishing. With the number of WOL posters, there would surely be a wide and challenging selection, even with the possibility of duplication, and it would be interesting to see the variety that A.E. might end up with in the position of "editor-in-chief". That in itself might be the stuff of further discussion.
To steal from Dickens: "What larks, Pip!"