Disliking it, 1967 edition

At the start of the 2010 International Poetry Festival, the Guardian looks back to the mood for poetry in 1967:

The International Festival of Poetry on London's South Bank brings to mind the fierce condemnation of the first festival from an unexpected source

What could be less controversial than a distinguished gathering of poets reading on London's South Bank? Not much, you might think. Extraordinary then – in the week of the 2010 International Festival of Poetry – to discover that when the first poetry festival was launched, in 1967, Donald Davie wrote an article in the Guardian headed: "Go home poets" and dismissed the festival as "vulgar nonsense". In the Observer, in a contribution entitled: "Satire, narcissism and a plethora of poets", Mary Holland reported that Al Alvarez, former poetry editor of the Observer, had introduced the poets thus: "There's a lot of narcissism on the platform." She elaborated: "One poet would get carried away by the sound of his own voice and verse; others could be seen and heard champing at the bit. Auden brooded in dark glasses while an American poetess – Anne Sexton – went on and on about her 'second suicide'."

The implication was that poets – vain and maladjusted – should not perform . . .