Richard Price writes:
Most of my books have been published in design-conscious volumes on the small press scene, in the case of Sense and a Minor Fever by the press I share with fellow poet Leona Medlin (Vennel Press), but mostly by others who have had faith in my work: Duncan Glen of Akros, Raymond Friel of Southfields, Hamish Whyte of Mariscat.
Because most of my publications have been stapled pamphlets, it has been even more difficult than usual to get them reviewed, or for the poems to enter into the wider discussion of contemporary poetry going on in the national newspapers and broadcast media. The media really do judge a book by its cover and though Marks & Sparks for instance went through two editions in eighteen months – very unusual in mainstream poetry, nevermind the small press scene – it is yet to receive a single review in a national newspaper. It was chosen by a respected freelance critic as a Scotland on Sunday Critic's Choice for 1996, but that newspaper had not reviewed the book during the year and for all I know had binned the review copy the minute they saw its staples.
None of my books has been reviewed by the key English journals Poetry Review or The Times Literary Supplement, nor by the national press both sides the border. When I entered my work for the highest paying poetry prize in Britain, the Paul Hamlyn Award, I was told that my books were not eligible because in effect they were bound 'wrongly'. It was only when I protested, and re-emphasised my application as one concerning the only book of mine that had a spine, that I was allowed to enter. Though I didn't win the prize, of over three hundred applications, mine was eventually in the shortlist of twenty. It was the only small press application to get there. I don't know if any others were actually allowed to enter: perhaps they did not protest as I did.
I say these things partly out of exasperation with what is deemed to be 'contemporary poetry' and partly because this treatment strikes at the idealism I have in my approach to poetry: the belief that the reading of a work liberates that poetry from its covers, whether they have been stapled or glued together, whether the book is 20 or 64 pages long, and allows poems to be understood beyond whatever limits imposed by a poem's being set down on a page. The reviewing scene with its tiny pool of six or seven poetry publishers who receive attention demonstrates that these newspapers are not really interested in poetry – which transcends the brandnames – but in the security of the linguistic and cultural deadness that the mainstream publishers, by their nature, underwrite.
It does seem to me that what is to pass as poetry in Britain is actually decided by just four or five poetry editors in publishers scattered round four English cities - Oxford, London, Manchester, and Newcastle. I do not think that that is a good thing, but I have found it a very difficult tendency to oppose. This is partly because poets who get published by the large publishers are then often offered chances to review books. As a way of maintaining confidence in their own work, they tend only to review books from other large publishers (or indeed from their own). The subconscious reasoning would go something like: 'Books from larger publishers must be the only worthwhile ones to review, or why else would I be published by one of them?' When a journalist reviews a book, of course the well-known imprints behave as a kind of quality threshold, too: they keep the journalist from having to make intelligent decisions, from worrying that they are actually missing the best work, because surely the best poetry could only be published by the biggest publishers? 'I've met the editor and he's an alright bloke'
It is no coincidence that the BBC has just about a dozen regular poets who appear again and again on radio to the exclusion of so many others, and that these are, again, the same who are published by the same four or five poetry publishers, who are the same who pop up in surveys of the Contemporary Scene, who are the same who dominate the anthologies of This and of That. This is only natural. It is so much more economic for any organisation - whether it is an unaccountable newspaper or an ostensibly very accountable Government body - to recycle the same few names it feels safe with rather than risk the lesser known. I don't know this, but I would guess that it is very unlikely for an anthology compiler or a programme producer to take on work from someone they haven't seen or heard reviewed, even if they have read the original poetry itself - it is other people's opinions not the poetry itself that holds sway I think, and that is why the newspapers and poetry magazines are so important to crack.
My experience is, though, that even with beautifully produced books, many of which in my experience look better in every sense than their mainstream counterparts, the small press is constantly fighting canonical oblivion. A poorly designed mainstream book that is a mess of misprints and whose contents suggest a poet of inept and trundling lassitude will always be reviewed - and often favourably - before any small press work is name-checked with ten others in an oh-so benevolent end-of-month roundup.
I set up Vennel Press with Leona Medlin to try and get more coverage for poets I thought were not getting fair coverage, or were not likely to be published by a mainstream publisher until 'market confidence' had built up around their work. Since then, writers we published such as W. N. Herbert, David Kinloch, and Donny O'Rourke have indeed become better known, but the most well-known among literary circles is actually the only one who went on soon after to find a mainstream English publisher.