Last week saw poets Alice Oswald and John Kinsella withdraw from the shortlist of the TS Eliot Prize. Their refusal to be in the running for this prestigious award was on the grounds that the Poetry Book Society, which runs it, is sponsored by hedge fund manager Aurum Funds. Oswald said that she thought ‘poetry should be questioning not endorsing such institutions’.
But, in this austere time of government cuts, when many arts organisations like the Poetry Book Society are about to lose their funding from the Arts Council, can we really blame them for accepting some ready cash from a hedge fund? Well, judging from the angry comments following any article in their defence, yes we can. Is there really nobody who, like me, thinks of this particular instance as pleasingly appropriate, given that TS Eliot himself was, less famously, a banker as well as a poet?
Oswald and Kinsella would no doubt have disapproved of Eliot’s earlier profession. William Skidelsky pointed out in the Observer that ‘behind their statements, I think it is possible to make out the contours of an old romantic idea: namely, that art should have no truck with commerce.’ Oswald and Kinsella are making their stand, but, in reality, it is impossible to completely disassociate poetry from hedge funds.
A main source of a poet’s revenue is a publisher’s advance. The publisher is able to offer this advance on the basis of readers buying a certain number of books. So readers, albeit via the publishing machine, fund authors. What if a reader of Alice Oswald’s poetry happens to be a hedge fund manager? Or, indeed, what if he or she invests with a hedge fund, via something as seemingly-innocent as a pension? (Aurum Funds, incidentally, invests public sector pension funds.) For a poet to want total separation between the worlds of commerce and poetry, they’d have to ban pretty much anyone with a bank account from buying their work.
But prizes are different, some people argue. They’re an added extra, a bonus, something not essential to a poet’s salary. Well a poet’s salary is usually pretty meagre, especially compared to that of a hedge fund manager. Advances aren’t what they used to be, and in order to live off one’s trade as a poet, prize money and the extra book sales generated from the prize certainly helps.
Why not be grateful to Aurum for their patronage of the arts? Patrons have existed — thankfully — for centuries. Think how much art exists thanks to the Medicis, that rather famous banking family. Perhaps, rather than snubbing it, the TS Eliot winner should say thank you. They could even write a poem entitled ‘Aurum’, following in the footsteps of Beethoven and his ‘Waldstein’ sonata.
Oswald feels that poetry should be ‘questioning’ such institutions, yet if she openly shuns involvement with them, it is hard to imagine why hedge funds would want to engage with her questions or her poetry. What if, instead of this one-way sponsorship, there were more of a reciprocal arrangement between the Poetry Book Society and Aurum Funds? This kind of set-up would encourage these two very different worlds to engage with each other’s questions.
Sponsorship like this, based on a dialogue between investor and project, is beginning to bloom. Driven in part by government cuts and in part by the powerful tool of the internet, organisations that allow individuals to part-fund art projects and get something in return are a vital new trend.
WeFund is a platform that allows people to pledge their support towards an arts project. And that project, if it reaches its funding target, then gives each investor something back. So, for instance, if you had pledged £12 to a quarterly arts journal called Madame Wang, you’d receive a copy of the journal and be invited to the launch to meet the contributing writers and artists. If you were to pledge £100, you’d get all that, plus a year’s subscription, plus your name on their website, plus your name printed in the edition. Rather than giving your money away and then not thinking about it again, this set-up encourages longer-term involvement, where both you and the organisation benefit from your money.
Unbound operates along similar lines, but is aimed specifically at books, rather than the arts in general. Their principle is that if a reader likes an author’s pitch, then he or she can help to fund the book. Investors will get their names printed in that book. It’s a way for anyone who cares about books to help to keep them going and, as such, is empowering for both readers and writers.
While an individual might not have a spare £15,000 burning a hole in his pocket for the TS Eliot jackpot, when £15,000 is thought about in terms of crowd-funding, it isn’t such an impossible target. Unbound and WeFund are still in their infancy, but it can’t be all that long before a worthwhile project could attract 1,000 people, each willing to pledge £15.
A prize funded by people is a nice idea. Personally, I’d be thrilled to donate £15 to a poetry prize. Especially if it meant that I’d receive a copy of the winning book (which would probably cost around £12.99, in any case). Perhaps crowd-funding is where the arts should look for help in lieu of the government.
However, some members of that crowd, willing to part with their cash to get an interesting project off the ground, would in all likelihood work for a hedge fund, or a bank, or invest with a hedge fund. Would poets find that too tough a pill to swallow, or would they think of these investors as individual people rather than abstract institutions of commerce?
In the meantime, what if Aurum Funds and the Poetry Book Society followed a similar model of dialogic funding? In return for the prize money, Aurum Funds could be given copies of the winning poet’s collection, or they could email a particularly fine poem by the winner to all their investors. What if the shortlisted poets were invited to Aurum’s Christmas lunch? How I would love to be a fly on that wall! The poets might question the bankers, but they might find that the bankers have some questions of their own about their work. Perhaps, if bankers felt more connected with our nation’s poets, then their appreciation of this wonderful but intimidating art form might grow.
Surely conversation between poetry and commerce is more beneficial than petulant separation? Certainly, if it were to mean city traders reading poetry in their lunchbreaks, then that must be a good thing for all involved. The traders get the poetry, and the poets get the extra readers. I’m sure that TS Eliot would be proud.
Emily Rhodes works in an independent bookstore in London and is writing a novel. She blogs at Emily Books and tweets @EmilyBooksBlog.
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