I recently attended a reading in Brighton that collected together the three most recent poets to be published by
Egg Box: Daniel Kane, Agnes Lehoczky and Vahni Capildeo. It was the first time all three had read at the same event I believe, and I was in the position of being the courier for the books - Egg Box's
Nathan Hamilton is a friend, and given his intense and worldly schedule I offered to do the decent thing and transport the stock for him. For those of you unfamiliar with how selling poetry works it is worth noting that readings account for the majority of book sales. It is the fastest, most direct way to get your fix, plus you get to put the money directly in the hands of the publisher or poet themselves. For a small press it is the most preferable option, as often book shops or places like Amazon will take a cut of your profits. There's also the fact that you have a direct engagement with an audience, rather than sitting at home hoping some sharp-eyed shopper will spot your book in Blackwells, or order it online after reading a review in Poetry London.
So, setting off down to Brighton I was reasonably hopeful. Nathan had given me 'an optimistic' twelve books - we sorted out a deal so that people who wanted to buy all three would be able to do so at a reduced price. I am not naive about these things and having talked about the whole nature of selling before, I knew I was likely to return with at least some of the books.
Can you guess how many I returned with?
The event was reasonably well attended - I'd say in the region of thirty-five people, all crammed into the upstairs room of the Hope. The audience were a little unresponsive, Agnes was on first and I found it disorientating when they failed to clap after her first poem. No worries though, perhaps they would for the next one, I thought - except they didn't. In fact they sat there, slack jawed through the whole thing - until the end when a polite and rushed applause followed. Now, I'm pretty sure it's considered a matter of politeness to applaud. Especially when the...poet...is...just...left...hanging...there. Apparently in Brighton this isn't the case. Either that or we just happened upon a crowd of one-armed poetry fans. Moronic, one-armed poetry fans. Moronic, one-armed poetry fans, who think a poem is something you could scare away by showing visible appreciation.
Perhaps that is a bit harsh. They warmed eventually, even emitting a titter or two at Daniel's playful, well-delivered set. The interval came and I prepared myself for the onslaught of people wanting to purchase books, which had already been graciously plugged earlier in the evening by the promoter.
Nothing.
Now that is unusual. Even if people don't rush up to buy stuff, they normally come and have a chat with one of the poets - or at least poke their noses into a book or two. It's agonising to watch someone pick up a book, scrutinise it for ten minutes, before popping it back down again and walking off. They should be restricted to a minute browsing, tops - they've just spent twenty minutes watching the poets read, why do they need a further ten minutes? Are they concerned the book may not consist of the same content? That we're trying to sell them blank pages? Are they idiots? Are they trying to memorise chunks of the book so they can go home and copy it up? ( As an aside, I once sat open-mouthed as an audience member read my poems after a reading, and then copied one up - okay I don't have a book to sell, but REALLY?)
All this crushing disappointment aside, the second half began with me plugging the books doubly hard - explaining how I'd first met Nathan, and my friendship with Agnes - explaining further that supporting such talent was bound up in the buying of their books. Nothing. In fact, so much had been made of Nathan's name and Egg Box, that by the time Vahni took the stage I was beginning to wonder if we were attending some form of commerce driven memorial service:-
"Unfortunately Mr Hamilton is no longer with us, but here's some books. I remember the first time I met him, under the bough of a tree in the cathedral grounds in Norwich - a true man of the people. Here's some books."
This is only a slight paraphrasing of Vahni's wonderful and well-humoured introduction. Actually, it's a complete reworking. She was a lot funnier than that.
In short, I didn't sell any books. This in itself was not the end of the world - it was a good evening all round, and I was glad to have attended. What did anger me was the general passivity of the audience, who made nothing more than a few perfunctory gestures towards the performers (half of whom had made the trip at their own expense to read). So much is said regarding the need to support artists and the arts, especially given the push towards free content now - yet very few people make the actual transition from talking about supporting the arts, and actually
doing it.
If you actually want to make a difference to the development of the arts and creative industries, think heavily about what you actually invest in. The entrance fee for an event is all very well and good, and at £5 a head for an audience of 35 - you can see the promoter did okay out of the evening (though I don't know what her running costs were like) - very little or none of that money ever gets back to the poets themselves.
With books at £10 a pop, one could argue the price acts as deterrent - but given they are hardbacks and high-quality, what's the problem? Most people would spend that on a round of drinks. True, combined with the steep entrance fee it might have been a bit much for the audience to stomach - but then, as we have just established, none of that money goes back to the actual performers. So what's the answer? It's a catch-22 - if you choose to perform at places where there's no entrance fee then you inevitably are confined by how much pre-publicity there will be, and by how much work a promoter is willing to do for you. Consequently, smaller audience - less sales anyway. It's no wonder that so many people rush to the middle ground of Arts Council funding or other forms of creative practice subsidy - at least it offers a kind of security, even if it result in an eventual compromise of quality or ideals.
It seems a tremendous shame that in a world so driven by user-created content there is yet to be a model by which people can feasibly live in a micro-economy of exchange between creative-producer and audience. Instead of pushing towards a more direct and engaging process, we seem to long for the security of the old one - where your art is taken in on a purely passive level, consumed at arms length, kept in it's place. Yah Boo and Selah.
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