writing

Month: January 2022

Looking Like A Poet

The agency have been at work again

He just didn’t look like a poet so they set to work

Told him to lose a few pounds and get a new stylist

The shabby chic look to match his fake poverty lyrics

Helped sell the gig and books in the provinces

Bolstered the teenage girl clickbait on tiktok

It was so much easier to sell the image than the contents

After all style over content the norm so no matter

His youtube and whatsapp ratings were off the scale after the revamp

His poetry books flew of the amazon print on demand presses

Soon even the arts council wanted a piece of the action

After all WWCB had just come onto their radar

Meanwhile his poems started to falter

The early promise based on genuine family history

Gave way to more and more internet copped falsities

His heroes had blundered on through addiction and blank pages

Now he was dropping more pills to keep the words coming

His apps were full of half-finished ideas and poems with no ending

Then one day it all ended

In a fast food stop on a motorway

He caught his reflection in a window

His eyes hollow, his hair teased by a stylist

Into the Victorian waif look

Another Delivery driver just like his father.

Another acronym to play with WWCBWP


White Working Class Boy Without Poetry

Addenda after Auden

A NEW YEAR GREETING

****
(poem here)

Addenda: What I am not.

Shaun Belcher is the author of one out of print slim volume that disappeared into the virtual ether before it was printed via lightning strikes/amazon so qualifies as a work of fiction.
He did not edit any anthology of obscure, unacknowledged legislators nor did he win any prizes, nor should we be specific did he enter any competitions.
He has held no official tenures as a creative writer at any top end nor third rate provincial university and has never reviewed other poets he dislikes for the simple reason of building a profile to get published.
He has never been recommended by friends in the poetry world as he has none and has studiously avoided anything to do with poets or poetry for over two decades.
He is member of no group who look after his publishing and reading interests when his work over time slides into fabulous irrelevancy or simply becomes so bad it an embarrassment.
He has no agenda nor minority axe to grind and has never played on his working class beginnings for pity or favour.
He regards his lifelong devotion to obscurity and keeping some semblance of sanity in a world over-run with poets like a corpse covered in flies that he should not add to other’s suffering by maintaining a steady output of academic poetry which simply done to fulfil research departmental targets.
His earnings from poetry over 40 years accrues to £70 he once got paid for being given a slot at Ledbury Festival by a friend and a commission again via a friend for £500 which works out to roughly £14.25 per annum which a living wage in the poetry world these days.

He is however still a poet if being a poet is none of the above.

He is still alive at time of writing and doesn’t expect things to change radically.

It all depends on a red wheelbarrow apparently and he does not have one.

Happy New Year.

© 2023 shaun belcher

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