I am surrounded by nice poems, nice poems in magazines, online, in books that come my way for review, nice poems at open mics and in workshops, nice poems sent to me for my podcast, Poetry Worth Hearing. It is very rare these days to come across a poem that is egregiously bad. Perhaps because of the rise in creative writing courses, nearly all the poems that hit the light of day are well written, like cardigans that are properly buttoned up or sums that come out even. I even write nice poems myself, at least some of the time. So what is it about nice poems, often to be found in books or magazines with excellent production values and attractive artwork, that makes my heart sink?
Niceness is not necessarily associated with form, but it is difficult to suppress the sense of weariness sometimes occasioned by neatly shaped villanelles, pantoums, sestinas, sonnets (of course), specular poems (whose title puts me off because it sounds so gynaecological), haibuns and haiku. Then there are prose poems – lots of them. Form doesn’t have to be nice; Steve Ely’s The European Eel is written in a sort of blank verse which is rhythmic, powerful, often jaw-breaking and definitely not nice. Richard Price plays with the sonnet form in a way which acknowledges and renews tradition.
Nor does niceness have anything to do with subject matter. I have read nice poems about mass extinction, Gaza, the breakdown of relationships, the ending or absence of love, terminal illness and death. And I have read electrifying poems about the wind in the trees (‘wind whip’ by Lucy Ingrams), love for a child ( ‘The air that he breathes’) by Richard Price, love for a parent (‘sentence’ again by Lucy Ingrams).
Perhaps niceness is sometimes connected to predictability – when you know what the next word will be, how the line will end, what the rhyme will be, where the turn will take you. These poems are nice because they confirm you in what you know, instead of taking you somewhere unsettling and new. This is just as true of poems of political outrage as for poems that celebrate babies or trees.
The poetry scene at the moment is rich and varied and though poets tend to see themselves as the Cinderellas of writing, it has perhaps never been so easy to get published, if not paid. Little magazines of the print variety spring up and wither, curated by heroic editors until they give up when money and energy are exhausted. Online outlets, cheaper to run, are everywhere; some of them even have readers. Small presses are mushrooming, partly because of digital printing. Even as Arts Council Funding dwindles, publisher-poet financing deals are on the up and up. The teaching of poetry-writing has also expanded enormously, often as more established poets attempt to support themselves through a combination of academic work, teaching poetry courses and judging competitions. Competitions, of course, are excellent fundraisers and they attract an abundance of nice poems.
Some presses are more associated with niceness than others; some presses publish poetry that is spiky, incomprehensible, experimental in appearance, poetry which could not be described as nice but nevertheless rarely lifts the heart or even the hairs on the back of your neck.
Nice poems are often very accessible, partly because of the predictability factor already mentioned, but accessible poems do not have to be nice. Think of the tiny gems in Thomas A Clark’s poems in that which appears or the immediacy and clarity in Victoria Kennefick’s new book Egg / Shell.
Some not nice poetry makes you work a bit harder. I think of Gail McConnell’s Fothermather where traditional forms and experiment are used to explore and express her own feelings about parenthood in a same sex relationship. Padraig Regan and Seán Hewitt in different ways express a queer sensibility and aesthetic in poems which are not nice but do send prickles along the skin.
Nevertheless, you do not have to be gay or Irish to escape niceness and, in truth, even the nicest books often have some poems which are not nice and which justify the purchase price. So what is it that lifts poems above mere niceness? It can be the poet’s urgent need to speak, the feeling that there is something they need to say. Niceness is too often a product of workshop prompts or themed issues of magazines. No doubt these are useful in helping poets to practice their craft, especially those who know they want to write but don’t know what to write about. Sometimes a prompt can trigger memories or associations which help the writer to produce something which is truly their own and thus transcends niceness.
Another factor which takes a poem beyond niceness is scrupulous attention to language, to words, the combining of words and their relation to what is not language. A third characteristic might be the willingness to take risks, both personally and linguistically. One poet who does that, I believe, is Jane Burn. Here is an example: https://modronmagazine.com/a-poem-by-jane-burn/?fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAR3U7FmNm2d1vGIMeF54MEQb9kGwZ3Q9MmnABl8ACnTZ30x2qANchhDALZY_aem_eWjfP2csgRyPZOwhe6RWNwThere is also the indefinable something which raises a poem from the rut, call it inspiration, duende, what you like, when the words do come together in a singularity which is the voice of the poet but which communicates with the reader or hearer to take them to a new place.
I have not quoted any poems which I consider to be nice; to do so would be invidious and I am aware that I am swayed by bias and mood. I have referred to a number of poems and poets I think are not nice. Again, my choices are arbitrary and personal, conditioned by recent reading, but I append a selection of their publications.
- Jane Burn, Be Feared, Nine Arches Press, 2021; and a new collection, Apothecary of Flight, forthcoming from Nine Arches.
- Thomas A Clark, that which appears, Carcanet, 2024
- Steve Ely, The European Eel, Longbarrow Press, 2021
- Seán Hewitt, Rapture’s Road, Cape Poetry, 2024
- Lucy Ingrams, Signs, Live Canon, 2023
- Victoria Kennefick, Eat or We Both Starve, Carcanet 2021; Egg / Shell, Carcanet, 2024
- Gail McConnell, Fothermather, Ink, Sweat & Tears, 2019; The Sun is Open, Penned in the Margins, 2021.
- Richard Price, Late Gifts, Carcanet, 2023
- Padraig Regan, Some Integrity, Carcanet, 2022
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