One final letter from Melbourne

Dear Salt reader.

I arrived in Melbourne four months ago. At that time I was confidently looking forward to meeting a lot of Salt writers, and discovering how poetry in Australia was evolving.

Now I have only two weeks left. I feel that my task hasn’t quite taken off.

Unfortunately, the week that I decided to begin my blogging adventures, Salt hit a financial brick wall. I found myself bombarded with questions from writers – ‘what’s going to happen to Salt?’ I had no answers for them.

I felt that I was in no position (10,500 miles away) to advise on the happenings back at Salt HQ. Some authors were worried about their current publication date, others just concerned to see such a successful team in jeopardy. Meanwhile, Chris and Jen were facing the real possibility of losing the business.

The week that the Just One Book campaign was launched, I visited Collected Works bookshop in Melbourne. Salt sales were up, and the authors I met had all purchased at least one title in support. I managed to take away from my meetings with these authors a few interesting insights into the Melbourne poetry scene.

But these meetings were filled with a sense of foreboding. With such a prolific independent publisher as Salt in danger of collapsing, what future was there for everyone else? What future was there for new poetry altogether?

I ended that week disheartened. I am a poet, and to be considering a bleak future for the art was not something I had expected during my time here. I stopped arranging meetings with other writers, and instead started to consider what poetry meant to me.

With news filtering through from England that the Just One Book campaign was fast becoming a huge success, I began to realise what the poetry market was all about.

Chris and Jen’s remarkable idea to turn Salt’s plight into an online viral campaign was inspired. Sales exploded and I don’t think anyone back at the office was expecting the onslaught of orders to be dispatched.

But it was the reaction of Salt’s authors, reviewers and committed readers that led to the success of the campaign. It revealed to me that these people were Salt’s market. For an indie press to survive, it needed the continued support of poets, academics, critics and committed poetry readers.

I was left with one question: Is this market sustainable enough to support new poetry in the future?

The rest of my time in Melbourne has been spent trying to answer this question. I believe that poetry needs to evolve in order to reach new audiences. Making poetry more accessible through the use of multimedia, visual and audio arts and the internet is vital. And in Melbourne I have seen examples of this.

I leave this city, once again inspired that poetry has new ground to break, new readers to engage. The future of innovative independent publishers like Salt is secure, so long as they support new ideas with the same confidence that Chris and Jen have shown in saving their business.

Lee Smith