Hierarchy of Writing Genres

Yesterday two things came up on the Creative Writing forum that I co-moderate both of which relate to a hierarchy within creative writing itself. I'd like to take a few moments to consider the implications of what was involved in them as it interests me greatly as I think, I hope, that I don't feel the division of creativeness that these represented.

On the forum the idea was mooted that the group worked on a  weekly poetry challenge to produce a body of work that could form an ebook or pamphlet at the end of our course. There was some debate about how often challenges / prompts were put up and so on but then there was a posting that said that the author didn't like poetry and actively avoided it so perhaps there aught to be a separate page for those who enjoyed poetry. This seemed like a reasonable suggestion but then it occurred to that:

• The page is for all creative writing and relegating poetry to an island on its own as one person didn't like it was segregating it from other forms of written creativity which has negative connotations.
• The course that is the linchpin for the page covers the broad spectrum of creative writing and therefore the page would no longer represent the course content, again potentially negatively impacting on this particular genre.
• The personal likes of one individual would restrict the ability of over 170 others on the page to be able to interact across the genres.
• As with TV we don't like, its perfectly possible to bypass postings that don't relate to our main interests by just moving on. 
• If you are also part of the Creative Writing student body or the Open University you'll be aware that the Societies selection had an established Poetry Society but instead of expending this to include all forms of creative writing there is now a separate society that is Creative Writing OU but that does not include poetry as that would impact on the territory of the Poetry Society. Frankly I didn't see that being encouraged to ape this set-up was a step in the right direction even if it suits those particular societies own aims and preferences.

However, all this brought up the feeling that poetry is looked down upon by certain sectors of the writing community. Is there something inherent in the genre that makes it appear lightweight or unworthy I wonder? To this I have no real answer as I'd have to question those who proposed the segregation and have established their own societies in this way but as a moderator my view from a practical side was 'this would make things unwieldy' in oh so many ways, and as a creative writer I felt uncomfortable with the notion that any genre could be relegated to being a separate and potentially unworthy.

What would your estimation have been? For practical reasons would it have been feasible to ask people to join a different group to view only poetry? Would others who don't like historical or biographical literature have suggested separate pages for these too? Would it be a crime to relegate crime fiction to a criminally restrictive page of its own? Where would this have left those wanting to ask questions about these subjects when they appeared in the course is others on the course weren't viewing those particular pages? Surely this would have fractionalised the student body and therefore our group strength and diversity?


Pretty deep and meaningful questions for a woman desperate for breakfast and only half dressed! You can tell I'm feeling especially 'stimulated' by this conundrum can't you?




So that's the first thing but the second was, strangely enough, about snobbery and hierarchy within the poetry world itself.

One of the students posted a link to an article about Kate Tempest (who I personally enjoy reading / hearing) where Kate remarks about the snobbery that severs the oral tradition and written tradition of the wonderful world of poetry. I think her comments about spoken poetry representing taking poetry back to an 'ancient time' when poetry was judged not on being clever or educated was interesting. Also I was disappointed but not surprised to see that written word poets, in her opinion, had a number of sniffy types who denigrated those using spoken word suggesting that they are not skilled wordsmiths, merely orators is interesting.

I'd counter this partially by saying that even the Greeks had substantial bias towards education and word-smithery and for pre-history one would presume that orators are judged as contemporary orators would be on by how 'clever', stirring or erudite they are relative to those they speak to, which she briefly alluded to. Its the thought that there is snobbery within the world of poetry that is undoubtedly true but in light of all the prejudice against poetic forms it is all the more sad.

Grrrr, to prejudice of all sorts.

http://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2015/aug/19/kate-tempest-slams-conventional-poets-disdain-for-performance?CMP=share_btn_tw