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I've seen this article retweeted a few times now, and I thought I'd share my thoughts on it, being a student of avant-garde poetry myself. /thread theguardian.com/books/2019/jan…
It is a common in literary history for liberal types to mistakenly champion artistic fads as groundbreaking forms of the future. It’s also common for conservative types to dismiss as fads genuinely important and groundbreaking art. /1
It is important to understand this cycle so as to stop yourself falling into either camp and ultimately embarrassing yourself. But what this article shows is that the journalist does not have this wise caution. /2
It seems to me that they are not championing these “Instagram poets” as innovators. They champion them because they are non-white women. It is the discourse of “diversity” so common on the modern Left, a discourse I find exasperating, as it shows little critical acuity. /3
Diversity discourse fundamentally misunderstands culture. Culture is conversation with the ideas our ancestors fought for and passed down. It is not about “accessible” bitesize poemy stuff that can be flicked through on a phone. This is a consumerist liberal’s idea of poetry. /4
The authors champion Kaur et al because of their race, nationality, and culture. But does Kaur’s poetry actually deal with these themes in any real sense? When I read her, I always think that basically anyone could have written it. /5
She is not a product of her heritage at all. She is a product of modern liberal consumerism, which flattens culture and heritage into labels and mass-produced products. /6
It is the misunderstanding of culture that lies behind advertisements like this, which champions “diversity” only in the sense that the rich and diverse history of these cultures can be accessed through consumer products. Which they can’t. /7 
Don’t believe me? Read any selection of Kaur’s poems. Scroll through her Instagram. None of them are difficult or challenging in any real sense. They deal with the “concerns” that any teenage white girl deals with. /8
The Guardian article even hints at this. I was screaming internally when I read this paragraph. Why do you think that these “diverse” writers can be consumed easily and on a mass scale, Guardian writers? It’s because it doesn't challenge cultural assumptions at all. /9
It’s the poetic equivalent of Chinese takeaways: actually not “Chinese” at all, but reimagined so to not offend Westerners’ tastes. Everyone understands this, which is why no-one calls themselves multicultural because they eat Chinese takeaways. Everyone except Guardianistas. /10
The poems that do attempt to deal with themes of race etc. are limited severely by their constant insistence on conforming to a certain type of simplistic political language that summarises the history of the West as “patriarchy” and everyday inconveniences as “oppression”. /11
There is nothing “brave” about such discourse. In fact it is the opposite: it is THE discourse of the modern Left. It is a “radical” politics that supports itself by constantly pushing the narrative that it is radical, when really it is depressingly orthodox. /12
Which is fine, I suppose. There’s a market for Twilight and whatever. But don’t try to convince me that this form of populist bitesize art is actually secretly groundbreaking. The only people who believe this are people who like to think of themselves as “radicals”. /13
Of course, you will always think you are a radical when you have no knowledge of the people who came before you. This is Eliot's point in 'Tradition and the Individual Talent'. /14
Eliot didn't seek tradition for safety. He sought it because he thought that, in a time of mass-production and globalisation, poets could only keep their depth and integrity if they saw themselves in continuation with the past, and strove to articulate their conflict with it. /15
All of this is such a shame. There are non-white poets who, with craft and subtlety, articulate their experiences as minorities, to the great benefit of us all. But they’ll never get the attention of the liberal consumerists who think Chinese takeaways are "diverse". /end
