Skip to main content
Advertise with the Morning Star
Winning hearts and minds beats a corporate gong any day
21st century poetry with Andy Croft

HAVE you ever noticed how the word “poet” is increasingly accompanied by the automatic prefix “award-winning”?

National Poetry Day — when a panel of award-winning poets give an award to an award-winning poet — is no longer a celebration of poetry but of the PR machinery of corporate publishers.

As poet and publisher Michael Schmidt has argued: “Poetry prizes are now the vehicle of literary reception. Control the prizes and you control the culture of reception.”

The 95th Anniversary Appeal
Support the Morning Star
You have reached the free limit.
Subscribe to continue reading.
Similar stories
ihf
Exhibition review / 16 May 2025
16 May 2025

KEN COCKBURN assesses the art of Ian Hamilton Finlay for the experience of warfare it incited and represents

Swansea city centre
Book Review / 21 January 2025
21 January 2025
REBECCA LOWE admires a complex, multi-layered working-class novel whose heart is the writer's self-discovery as a poet
IMPROVE THE BLANK PAGE: Installation by Nicanor Parra at the
Book Review / 3 January 2025
3 January 2025
ALISTAIR FINDLAY welcomes a collection of essays from one of the cultural left’s most respected speakers and activists
Best of 2024: Letters from Latin America / 6 December 2024
6 December 2024
LEO BOIX selects the best books of fiction, poetry, and non-fiction written by Latinx and Latin American authors published this year