Fire River Poets
They say there are more people who write poetry than read it. That’s quite possibly true, judging by the lack of spirit in much of the ‘amateur’ poetry I have seen, which betrays lack of study of good role models. In this country we have an amazing number of first class poets, not all of whom are fortunate enough to gain any sort of recognition in the cash poor world of the poetry publisher but there’s no excuse for not reading!
There are also large numbers of people who love poetry, who buy books of poetry and attend readings, so the poetry ‘scene’ is potentially very healthy but it needs more commitment from the interested parties. Here in Somerset, we have not had much opportunity to judge the standard of local poets because few have obtained the support of a publisher and there have been few venues which offer well publicised readings or poetry cafés. The poetry shelves of bookshops are full of ‘big names’ and the national chains in particular are guilty of ignoring local talent.
We want that to change.
‘We’ are Fire River Poets, the Taunton-based poets’ group, and we have recently begun to take matters into our own hands. We started offering events at the end of last year, convinced that Taunton - and Somerset as a whole - is badly served by the Poetry Establishment (publishers, booksellers and critics). And equally convinced that we have local poets who are every bit as entertaining and engaging as the ‘big’ names, who express (far better than visiting poets) what it is to live in the South West and how the world looks from our perspective.
We have up to now hosted two poetry cafés and two readings. We aim to do many more, and the audience is getting bigger as word spreads and our network extends. Our local Theatre and Arts Centre, The Brewhouse, is supportive and we feel we are on the way to making a good contribution to the development of the Arts in the county.
There are many groups around Somerset who cater for poets and together they cover most of the county. There is therefore no excuse for the lonely amateur to remain unsupported in the back bedroom, scribbling away in isolation. However, the groups themselves still tend to work in isolation, so one of the next tasks is to try and develop a network amongst the groups so that we can work together to increase the opportunities for local poets to gain recognition and encourage the audience for poetry which we know is out there to come and hear local poets and appreciate their work.
The Arts in general seem to be well supported in the South West, and we can feel optimistic, I think, that if we poets shout a bit louder, we will also gain the support of the arts funding bodies. We, in Fire River Poets, certainly aim to shout a lot louder and invite other poets of Somerset to join us.
John Stuart
Chairman
Fire River Poets
