It Ain't me, Babe!

Today We Are Shooting Poets
by Peter Sansom


not bad or good poets
not metrical, not free verse not concrete
or performance poets,
not poets who write about nothing but poetry
and poets

not confessional poets,
English but like pop groups singing in American,

not poets writing as if they were talking as if
anyone ever talked like that,

not poets who write about what it is
never to be able to write, or love poems
or sex poems or poems about the colour of
their oppression or about the gender
of their oppression or about its class,

not poets with words all
over the place and lowercase i's,
not incomprehensible even to themselves poets

not poets who get famous for something
be it poetry or who they are or what they do
besides writing poems

not neglected poets
nor the experts on their own poems
who read nobody for fear of influence,

not poets up to the ears in scholarship
and not a spark in them

no. We are shooting the other poets.

You know who they are and I do.
Let's go buddy, let's do it.

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Peter Sansom is Director of the Poetry Business and editor of The North and Smith/Doorstop Books. His own publications include Writing Poems (Bloodaxe), January and Point of Sale (both from Carcanet). He was poet-in-residence for Marks and Spencer during 1999.