Engaging New Audiences with Public Poetry

Poetry as an art form is both central and marginal in contemporary culture. At times of celebration and crisis, the language of poetry still has currency, as demonstrated by the continuing role of the Poet Laureate, carried out for ten years by our own Dame Carol Ann Duffy. But compared with dominant cultural forms like music and film, can poetry still flourish as a genuine public art? When poets at Manchester Met delivered a body of work that reached combined broadcast audiences of more than 50 million, they showed that it could.

Michael Symmons Roberts, Professor of Poetry at Manchester Met, is a poet, writer and broadcaster with a wealth of published and critically acclaimed work. Alongside his colleagues, Dame Carol Ann Duffy, Professor Jean Sprackland, Andrew McMillan and Dr Helen Mort, he has helped build a body of collaborative and public work that set out to challenge social and political issues.

It was a venture underpinned by research that was 20 years in the making, crafted into a series of broadcasts, performances and commemorations. The work tackles real problems faced by real people, and takes a classic art form into contemporary platforms and arenas.

At the heart of the poets’ collective ethos is the desire to deliver poetry to a mass audience. Michael explains the importance of this: “Manchester Met has always had this tradition and reputation that its poetry is outward facing. It’s not just about the poems on the page. Going back decades, we’ve always wanted to be active in broadcasts, working with musicians and theatre makers to reach new audiences beyond the cohort that would buy and read poetry books. We’ve always attracted poets who are interested in that kind of engagement, that’s always been part of our research strength.”

That strength was exponentially reinforced by the inspiration of the then Poet Laureate, Dame Professor Carol Ann Duffy, whose contribution to the study includes an adaptation of the medieval play Everyman (2015) for the National Theatre and Ritual Lightning: Laureate Poems (2014).

Critically, the works have made their mark. Andrew McMillan’s Playtime won the 2019 Polari Prize celebrating work that explores the LGBT experience, while Jean Sprackland’s Strands scooped the 2012 Portico Prize for non-fiction.

Hidden homelessness

Together, the Manchester Met poets used their work to challenge some of the deepest economic, ecological and sociological problems of our time.

One of those concerns was homelessness – an issue tackled head on by Michael’s Men Who Sleep in Cars (2015 & 2017).

It tells the story of three homeless men across Manchester who all sleep in their vehicles at night while trying to maintain normal lives by day. Set against the backdrop of a World Cup, their stories are unknowingly intertwined.

“It’s a verse drama set on one night in Manchester, in which three men – different ages and backgrounds – have all ended up in that kind of hidden homelessness where you sleep in your car and pretend that your life is going OK. It’s a significant problem, particularly in cities like Manchester.

“I wrote this play in the months leading up to the World Cup, which I thought gave a real opportunity to juxtapose powerless men with these very powerful, iconic figures. These three men, in different parts of Manchester, are listening to some of the most powerful and wealthy men in the world on the radio.”

Originally a radio broadcast, the piece was shortlisted for a BBC Audio Drama Award and proved so popular that the BBC re-commissioned it for TV. Maxine Peake, who narrated the original radio recording, reprised her role for the on-screen version, starring alongside Rob Edwards, Nick Haverson and Cesare Taurasi.

It aired on BBC Four to a national audience. The Observer called it ‘a work of genius’ (2017).

Men Who Sleep in Cars was the result of Michael’s investigation into an issue that affected the city he works in. He explains the genesis of his work: “I was driving through Manchester one evening and heard a phone-in on BBC Five Live about homelessness. A man phoned up and said he was too ashamed to give his name. He said none of his family knew he was homeless but he sleeps in his car.

“I followed this and looked it up online. There’s a sense in which this is under-reported. There are agencies out there that are battling to improve the lives of people who are on the streets or in hostels. But these are the people in the middle ground who have lost everything apart from their car.” 

Michael explains how he was able to blend poetry with the type of speech that audiences are used to hearing, and how that helped deliver his message.

“They all used naturalistic speech. They all used slang and talked like you would if you were having a conversation in a pub in Manchester. But because I was using a rhyme scheme, it was reconfigured in a way that lifts it out of the ordinariness and makes it sound resonant and memorable. People were saying ‘I hadn’t seen this done with modern speech’.”

Michael laughs, “I’m not the only one who’s written verse drama. Lots of people have done verse drama. I wouldn’t claim that. But because it was on television, it was accessible. It used Mancunian actors and it seemed to connect with them, so they were able to carry these stories to the audience.”

A voice for the voiceless

Michael believes that just as important as taking poetry to new audiences was the challenge of delivering poetry from unlikely sources.

“We sometimes have an expectation that poetry is reserved for significant or honourable events. Very formal events that address great moments where great people do great things. And this was about other lives, other stories. These were people who’d lost everything. Who didn’t have a voice, effectively. They were living in shame. Giving them the equipment of poetry to express themselves seemed to make people pay attention to their stories in a different way. With a different intensity.”

There’s a scene in which McCulloch, a once esteemed security professional who wears a suit by day, laments his loss of power as the rain beats down on the uninsured, untaxed Mercedes he calls home:

I guess you’d call it helplessness. A man like me, who runs the show. Then suddenly, all that you know. All that you do and think and feel. Is taken out of your control. And though it’s ancient history. I guess I’m in recovery.

On the back of the TV drama’s success, Maxine Peake used her platform to speak up on behalf of the real people that inspired the play. She issued a rallying cry to address Manchester’s ‘homelessness explosion’.

The work has also been successful in finding new audiences, proved through some impressive statistics. The poets’ broadcasts and adaptations have achieved estimated engagements (listens, reads and views) totalling over 52 million since 2014.

This led to many new commissions designed to mark public anniversaries and events. Duffy’s The Wound in Time, commissioned by director Danny Boyle and 14-18 NOW, was recited on beaches across the UK on Remembrance Day 2018. Again, it generated new audiences for poetry, increasing reach with young people and lower socio-economic groups.

But it’s important to look beyond the numbers, too. Stories about real lives can so often have an effect on real lives. As Michael explains, “Some of it inevitably is anecdotal. After the film went out the producer was approached by a homeless hostel. They asked for a copy that they could show to people who came in, because so many of them identified with this cycle of not admitting it and therefore not seeking help.”

Michael continues, “You hope it makes a difference by sparking a debate.”

Setting a new course for poetry

Alongside challenging homelessness, the poets also search for equality, social justice and cultural freedom.

In a 2018 dramatisation of Paradise Lost, Michael drew parallels between Milton’s original civil war-torn world and post-Brexit Britain. Elsewhere, Mort’s re-imagining of the Medusa myth looked to increase awareness in sexual abuse, while McMillan’s work challenged sexuality and masculinity as he worked with LGBT communities.

Then there was Carol Ann Duffy’s re-telling of the 15^th century play Everyman. Here, instead of trying to address questions of our own morality and mortality within religion, Duffy poses similar questions under the context of the eco-crisis currently facing the human race. A thoroughly secular definition of salvation.

By forging new collaborative work in public poetry, the Manchester Met poets show that poetry can once again be a major driver in sparking the conversations that effect change.