When I first saw the news that Caffè Nero is establishing a new set of writing prizes, I was thrilled. Since the Costa book awards came to an untimely end last year, it’s been obvious there is a gap that needs filling, a mechanism to celebrate titles which have the potential to reach a bigger than expected audience. As a judge in the final edition of the Costas, selfishly I was pleased too: the experience of reading across genres I wouldn’t always look at was enormously nourishing for me.
Alas, the thrill quickly wore off when it became apparent that one category had not made the transition from Costa’s prizes to Nero’s. While there will be awards for children’s books, debut fiction, fiction and nonfiction, poetry has not made the cut.
What have we poets done wrong? Was it the fear that sestinas will put people off their lattes? The belief that, as poems are all over adverts now, they don’t need to be celebrated? “These are a brand-new set of awards,” a spokesperson from Caffè Nero said. “The chosen categories reflect the main genres readers are most likely to find/see when they visit a bookshop or online retailer.” According to Meryl Halls, managing director of the Booksellers Association, the new prizes’ focus will be on “commercial books with wide appeal”.
It doesn’t take a Bletchley Park codebreaker to identify the idea that poetry doesn’t sell. But this is a tired idea: poetry book sales in the UK have been on an upward tick for a while now. Are the numbers comparable with bigger genres? Undoubtedly not. But if we accept that the average sales figure for a literary fiction title is 250 copies (disputable, of course), it’s hard to see why poetry should be excluded from prizes and miss out on this means of reaching more potential readers.
Indeed, you might have thought the notion that poetry cannot produce “commercial books with wide appeal” – let alone cultural saliency – would have been put to bed by the wild success of a poet such as Rupi Kaur, a million-copy New York Times bestseller. And it is somewhat baffling to imply that an artist such as Warsan Shire, who has collaborated with Beyoncé, might lack appeal for a wide audience.
The failure here is one of imagination – a belief that because contemporary poetry currently appears to be a niche interest it must always be so. Or that most of what is written is overly intellectual at the expense of being accessibly emotional. That it has forgotten the virtues of rhyme, form and other features that please the ears. That it is highbrow, forbiddingly so. That most of its practitioners are deliberately obscure, alienating punters by being aloof from them and their concerns. That it was in some indefinable way “better” – and so more saleable – at some unspecified point in the past.
It is hard not to blow a big raspberry to all of that. It does not take long to discover poets and collections that answer all of those objections and more while being resolutely of the now. Just off the top of my head, let me direct you to Holly Hopkins, Helen Mort and Kayo Chingonyi, all of whom are writing poems that are intriguing in subject, rigorous in craft, form and sound, and brilliant to boot.
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The organisers have left some wriggle room for themselves, noting that “it’s possible additional categories could be added in the future”. I hope their minds are changed by the simple fact that some of the most exciting and thrilling writing is to be found on the poetry shelves. This is not asking for special treatment, rather a little faith that if you put books of poems in front of readers, with no handwringing or guilt tripping, they will find their way to people who will love and adore them like any other genre.
It’s a shame that a prize that wants to bring great writing to more people can’t see that truth in the bottom of its coffee cup.
