Despite the popular impression of starving poets in garrets, many poets actually made or make a decent living - just not from poetry. While some doubtless get by in menial jobs waiting tables or cleaning floors, most successful poets seem to find some form of middle-class employment. Perhaps the starving poets can't afford the stamps to submit their work or like Weldon Kees and Hart Crane commit suicide, or maybe poetry does bring rewards. Clearly there is more research to be done on whether the jobs precede or follow the poetry. What follows is just a sketch of how poets get their money.
Insurance executive Wallace Stevens is one of the most famous examples, working his way to vice-president of the Hartford Accident and Indemnity Company. The few poets to be seriously rich have inherited their money, such as Frederick Seidel, who is acclaimed as one of the greatest living American poets for verse about wasted lives and motorbikes, and Elizabeth Bishop who was independently wealthy until late in her life. Richer than both was James Merrill, the son of Charles Merrill of Merrill Lynch. In an earlier age, Elizabeth Barrett Browning was the child of a wealthy sugar plantation owner, although later they fell on hard times and she married Robert Browning.
While few poets were as rich as those, poetry is perhaps the most middle-class of all the arts. William Carlos Williams was a doctor, though not wealthy. TS Eliot worked for Lloyd's Bank until 1925. Robert Bridges, who had little success as a poet during his lifetime, was a doctor until lung disease forced his retirement. RS Thomas was a clergyman who lived a very simple, austere life; in an earlier age, Gerard Manley Hopkins was a priest though he never published during his lifetime. For women poets, a husband is a common source of income - these days perhaps it works the other way around. Edna St. Vincent Millay was supported by her husband in her verse and unconventional life. HD (Hilda Doolittle) had wealthy husbands and many admirers. Sylvia Plath, little-known during her life, had a pushy mother and a husband with connections.
The best or luckiest poets, particularly the Americans, supplemented their income with grants and awards such as the Fulbright program, Guggenheim fellowship, and MacArthur fellowship, which can provide large sums.
There is a welfare system for poets with fewer commercially-valuable skills and no ancestors in trade: this funding scheme is the university system, active on both sides of the Atlantic. Some poets, such as AE Housman and William Empson, were at the top of their academic specialisms, others were inspirational teachers. Some probably got their jobs through their fame as a poet; others took a conventional route into academia. Here follows a brief list of poets in academia:
- Maya Angelou: Wake Forest University (American studies)
- John Ashbery: Brooklyn College, Bards College (languages and literature)
- WH Auden: U of Michigan, Bennington, Smith, Oxford (poetry) and others
- Charles Bernstein: Columbia University, Brown University, and Princeton University (poetry and creative writing)
- John Berryman: U of Iowa
- Elizabeth Bishop: U of Washington, Harvard, NYU, MIT
- Carol Ann Duffy: Manchester Metropolitan University (English and creative writing)
- William Empson: Peking University, Sheffield (English), and others
- Robert Frost: Middlebury College, and others
- Seamus Heaney: Berkeley, Queens Belfast, and Carysfort College (a teacher-training college)
- AE Housman: UCL and Cambridge (Latin)
- Randall Jarrell: University of Texas at Austin, Sarah Lawrence, University of North Carolina
- Louis MacNeice: Birmingham (UK) (classics), Bedford (London) (Greek)
- Edwin Morgan: University of Glasgow (literature)
- Paul Muldoon: Oxford (poetry), St Andrews, Princeton, and others.
- Sean O'Brien: Sheffield Hallam (poetry), Newcastle (creative writing)
- Charles Olson: Black Mountain College (literature)
- Don Paterson: St Andrews (English)
- Bob Perelman: Penn (English)
- JH Prynne: Cambridge (English literature and poetry)
- Henry Reed: U of Washington
- Adrienne Rich: Rutgers, Stanford, and others
- Theodore Roethke: Michigan State, U of Washington, and others
- Delmore Schwartz: Princeton and others (creative writing)
- Stephen Spender: U of Cincinnati, Gresham College, UCL (English), and others
- George Szirtes: UEA, Norwich School of Art and Design (creative writing)
- Allen Tate: Princeton (creative writing) and others
- Derek Walcott: Boston U (poetry and drama), University of Alberta (creative writing)
Many poets made a living from a career in writing - not writing poetry, which does not make many people rich, but in other forms of wordsmithery, such as fiction. Cecil Day Lewis, the son of a clergyman, wrote detective novels as Nicholas Blake. John Masefield wrote numerous novels, including children's classic The Box of Delights, and military history. Thomas Hardy had become a famous novelist by the time he turned to poetry. Robert Graves wrote the very popular WWI memoir Good-bye to All That, the novel I, Claudius, and the philosophical book The White Goddess. Siegfried Sassoon wrote most of his poetry while in the army, but had his principal successes with prose such as Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man. Maya Angelou is also known for her autobiographical fiction and lectures. Robert Penn Warren is best known for the novel All The King's Men, which has been filmed twice. Carl Sandburg wrote children's stories and much other prose. Langston Hughes wrote in almost every form: fiction, a screenplay, books for children, autobiography, plays, opera libretti, essays, and translations. Although poor for much of his life, Charles Bukowski wrote cult novels, some of which were eventually filmed. Hugh MacDiarmid wrote prose, translations from Scottish Gaelic, and journalism. George Szirtes works as a translator and publisher as well as teaching and writing.
Ian Hamilton worked as a journalist and critic and wrote books on football and poetry. John Betjeman, self-styled "poet and hack" wrote journalism, often on architecture or other aspects of England, and presented programs for the BBC. Christopher Logue worked as a journalist, playwright, screenwriter, and actor. Alfred Austin was a journalist and editor, and wrote prose and plays. John Ashbery worked as journalist, art critic, and translator. Hugo Williams has worked as a film, theatre, and music critic and poetry editor for various magazines. Henry Reed, a man known for one great poem, The Naming of Parts, wrote a lot of radio drama before getting a teaching job. Louis MacNeice worked for the BBC as a reporter and dramatist. Stephen Spender and Randall Jarrell also worked extensively in literary journalism, editing, and criticism.
In addition to those working for magazines or small presses, poets including Cecil Day Lewis, TS Eliot, and Lawrence Ferlinghetti have worked more seriously in publishing. At Faber and Faber, Eliot published many of the finest poets of the 20th century. Stevie Smith worked as a secretary at the firm of magazine publisher George Newnes. Michael Longley worked for the Arts Council of Northern Ireland for many years. Other poets such as WB Yeats and Derek Walcott have been active at running theatres.
Ted Hughes seems to have made a living at least partly from poetry, although he wrote classic children's book The Iron Man and non-fiction. Allen Ginsberg lived largely off his poetry, readings, etc, although later in his life he taught English at Brooklyn College. Gregory Corso, a petty criminal in his youth, later lived off the legend of the Beats with readings and occasional teaching jobs. The Australian poet Les Murray retired to write full-time in his 30s.
Of course there are other ways you can get money. TS Eliot's estate receives a lot of money from the musical Cats. Ian Hamilton Finlay was a successful artist, working with numerous collaborators on many commissions. Robert Frost had a farm, though he also taught English and creative writing for most of his life. Langston Hughes worked for a while as a hotel busboy to have time to write, while Charles Bukowski worked for the US postal service. Dylan Thomas worked for the BBC but his main life skill seems to have been a talent for borrowing money, and he's not the only poet to have lived from hand to mouth.
And spare a thought for those like Edward Thomas, Wilfred Owen, Rupert Brooke, Alun Lewis, Keith Douglas, and Sylvia Plath who didn't live long enough to have a chance as professional poets.
For a concrete proof of the central place of academia in poetry, look at winners of the TS Eliot Prize, reckoned Britain's most prestigious poetry award:
- 2008 - Jen Hadfield, Nigh-No-Place (main income unknown, but sells books and visual artworks, lives in Shetland)
- 2007 - Sean O'Brien, The Drowned Book (worked Newcastle University)
- 2006 - Seamus Heaney, District and Circle (formerly Carysfort College etc)
- 2005 - Carol Ann Duffy, Rapture (worked Manchester Metropolitan U)
- 2004 - George Szirtes, Reel (worked Norwich School of Art and Design and UEA)
- 2003 - Don Paterson, Landing Light (worked St Andrews)
- 2002 - Alice Oswald, Dart (unknown - lives with husband and children in Devon)
- 2001 - Anne Carson, The Beauty of the Husband (worked McGill - reticent about life)
- 2000 - Michael Longley, The Weather in Japan (Combined Arts Director, Arts Council of Northern Ireland)
- 1999 - Hugo Williams, Billy's Rain (critic and editor)
- 1998 - Ted Hughes, Birthday Letters (poetry and prose)
- 1997 - Don Paterson, God's Gift to Women (worked St Andrews, as above)
- 1996 - Les Murray, Subhuman Redneck Poems (writes full-time)
- 1995 - Mark Doty, My Alexandria (worked Rutgers)
- 1994 - Paul Muldoon, The Annals of Chile (worked Princeton)
- 1993 - Ciaran Carson, First Language: Poems (worked Queen's Belfast)
This is not the place to delineate the tightly-knit web of modern poetry (Private Eye has chronicled the too-close relations between poetry judges and poetry prize-winners, for instance). Nor will I speculate on whether this narrowness and inwardness is a weakness. This is a matter for further inquiry, which should probably focus on both financial questions and the comparison of career paths in poetry and academia.
I won't list individual sources here, but references included Ian Hamilton's Against Oblivion: some lives of the 20th century poets; Wikipedia; various university websites; www.poetryarchive.org; www.kirjasto.sci.fi; The Guardian and other newspapers. I wasn't able to come up with a clear picture on the earnings of some poets, including Robert Lowell, Alfred Lord Tennyson, Robert Browning, Marianne Moore, Andrew Motion, EE Cummings. As I said, work in progress.
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