Here is a simple trick I use whenever I feel myself feeling frustrated about the technology ecosystem coverage in the media:
Replace “technology” with “poetry” and “entrepreneur” with “poet”.
It works surprisingly well:
- “There has never been a better time to invest in poetry”
- “Packed agenda planned For Poetry Week”
- “Dragons’ Den-style competition to find Whanganui’s next great poet”
This idea first came to me back in 2013 when I was making regular trips to the US with Vend. Lorde was top of the Billboard charts with her single “Royals”. Together with Joel Little she has recorded a very sticky song. But the lyrics! I thought those were remarkable.
I wondered: How do we leverage the success of this world class poet to create opportunities for the next generation of aspiring Kiwi poets? If Lorde can do it, why couldn’t we have a steady stream of poets finding international success? Poetry could become our next big export market!
The constraint seemed obvious: Who is funding poets? Nobody! I couldn’t find a single local venture capital fund focused on poetry.
Maybe it’s fine for prodigies like Lorde, with their international recording contracts. But what about the next layer down? Do we really want all of our aspiring poets to have to go off shore for their funding?
I started telling everybody I could: We need to be the place where poets want to live!
I imagined all sorts of initiatives: Poetry hubs where poets could work together, learn to rhyme and be mentored by older more experienced poets; Boot camps, where young poets would be taught to focus on the type of writing that will attract the eye of poetry investors - taking them from zero to performing on a national stage in just a few weeks (this would make great television, if anybody knows a producer); A visa program where we entice recognisable poets and publishers to emigrate to New Zealand - to give it some cut through we’d sensibly name this after a famous All Black, perhaps the Colin Meads Fellowship; Maybe even a Ministry of Stanza & Verse to make sure that government funding is flowing to the poetry consultants who need it most and to see the broader context and the challenges we face in terms of the world to apply poetry more than we have been in a wider range of areas.
Reader, I have bad news. Many years have passed. I’m starting to doubt if it’s going to work.
Since then a number of other locally penned songs have made it into the international charts. Sure, not all of them have been funded through this scheme. Not any of them, actually, if we’re honest, but we’re all part of the same ecosystem of poets. NZ Inc, if you like. And it takes a village to raise a child, right?
Maybe I just need to be patient. After all, it take years for a poetry ecosystem to develop. 🤔
