IN the current issue of Literary Review, the magazine's editor Auberon Waugh entreats the New Labour government not to e misled into subsidising experimental or difficult writing Nothing but harm results from that, as the present abject state of English poetry illustrates, under the heavily subsidised umbrella of The Poetry Society."
Warming to his subject, Mr Waugh declares: "There is no virtue in experiment for its own sake. In a literature as old and as rich as ours, everything has been tried. In a language as plain as ours, difficulty can only mean obscurity, and obscurity is the first characteristic of bad writing."
As his father once famously said: up to a point, Lord Copper. If, down through the centuries, there had been no artistic experimentation, we would not now have Rembrandt's portraits, Bach's fugues, Beethoven's late quartets, Schuhert's Great C major symphony, Emily Dickinson's poems, Renoir, Mahler, T. S. Eliot or Joyce - to take just a few obvious examples of art we now take for granted.
But I know what Mr Waugh is really saying, which concerns the seemingly wilful obscurity of much twentieth century art and which echoes Philip Larkin's sentiments in his preface to All That Jazz. Modernism, Larkin argued, is related to an imbalance between the two tensions from which art springs: these are the tension between the artist and his material, and between the artist and his audience . . . in the last 5 years or so the second of these has slackened or even perished. In consequence the artist has become over concerned with his material (hence an age of technical experiment) and, in isolation, has busied himself with the two principal themes of modernism, mystification and outrage".
Larkin disliked "such things not because they are new, but because they are irresponsible exploitations of technique in contradiction of human life as we know it". The resultant works help us "neither to enjoy nor endure". Confronted by some of what passes for important in contemporary painting, music, poetry and fiction, I find it hard to disagree.
STILL, the desire for creativity, not to mention the fame and money that can result from it, continues. But what to do about the latter? Well, if you haven't had a novel published in the last few months or if you don't have one due for publication in the next few, you're not eligible for the Booker Prize. If you're lacking those qualifications and furthermore are not a woman (quite easy to check), you're definitely not eligible for the Orange Prize.
However, don't despair, as there are still a number of competitions you actually can enter. They may not bring you the bouquets and brickbats, not to mention large amounts of lolly, that are guaranteed to Booker and Orange winners, but they may be of interest to you nonetheless.
For instance, the Roscommon Abbey Writers poetry and short story competition is offering first prizes of £500 in each of these categories. Stories should be no longer than 3,000 words, poems no longer than 40 lines, closing date is next Friday, and if you want to know more, contact Roscommon's county arts officer Emer Leavy at Roscommon County Library.
Alternatively, though staying in Roscommon (a literary minded county, obviously), there's a first prize of £200 in the Boyle Arts Festival poetry competition. Closing date for this is June 30th, entry fees are £3 for the first poem and £2 each for any others, and the person to contact is M. Fawcett, Knockvicar, Boyle.
Or you can direct your attention southwards and enter for the short story/poetry/one act play competition being held in conjunction with the South Tipperary Writers' Weekend, which takes place from October 24th to 27th. Closing date is August 29th, there's 500 in prizes, and you can find out all at the South Tipperary Arts Centre, Nelson Street, Clonmel.
MEANWHILE let's not forget the Kerry Ingredients Book of the Year, which coincides with the upcoming Listowel Writers' Week (May 28th to June 1st) and for which the winner will receive a cool £4,000. This is for a work of fiction by an Irish writer, and three books have been shortlisted by judges Edna O'Brien and Colm Toibin: Deirdre Madden's One by One in the Darkness (which has also been shortlisted for the Orange Prize, mentioned above), Aisling Maguire's Breaking Out and Frank Ronan's Lovely. Interesting choices.
AND finally (as they say in all the best columns), the latest knees up at the Stray Dog Cafe takes place tomorrow night and features music from Len Graham, Padraigin Ni Uallachain and Gary O Briain, and poetry from Michael Davitt and Moya Cannon.
The venue is Project at the Mint, Henry Place (off Henry Street) in Dublin, and last month's opening night was, according to Poetry Ireland director Theo Dorgan, "a wild success", although the adjective may not be unconnected with the fact that alcoholic nourishment is available along with the music and verse.