Kate Clanchy - poet - is 'cancelled' by her publisher

[ArabellaScott]

Picador are unpublishing - ceasing to distribute - all of Clanchy's books. The article says 'by mutual consent', but it's not a good thing to hear a poet/author being 'cancelled'.

Literature/poetry is not in a healthy state right now.

unherd.com/thepost/picador-cancels-poet-kate-clanchys-books/

In case you missed the brouhaha - Article from last year:

www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-58151144

Looking at this from a wider perspective, it seems like the effect of this is that authors aren't going to make observations about anything that could possibly be considered phobic - a potentially infinite group - in ways that are very cutting or could hurt people's feelings.

Whether the observations are true or might be accurate won't be the point, it will be about being kind and keeping the reader comfortable.

Reviews and comments that say they don't like the tone are one thing, this kind of attempt to cancel is another, because it will mean that authors are afraid to write challenging material.

Precisely, Santa. If writers are afraid to be seen to be 'disrespectful', and publishers afraid to publish work that is 'unkind', what kind of work will we end up with?

I mean, I remember people who were uncomfortable when The Glass Castle came out, because they felt like it showed homeless and poor people in a bad light, blamed them for their circumstances, made them look trashy.

It can be difficult to find the line, especially when people are basically being trained to go through every book (especially if you are a female author) and find excerpts that could be seen to be outside of what id pol allows.

If you are writing about real people who were children/minors when you interacted with them, is there no duty of care? Where is the line of when you get to write whatever you want to about your students, and you don't care if they read horrible things about their teenage selves when they are older? (I'm not referring to the "almond-shaped eyes" type of thing, which is Clanchy being oh-so-descriptively-poetic. I'm talking about the long passages about specific students and the putdowns about their looks and/or personalities.)

I would have found some of the things she wrote about fine in fiction, or even fictionalised nonfiction. Some of the other stuff I would've found distasteful even in fiction.

I don't disagree that she has done a great service to those students whom she has taught and published, and she does quite a lot of "thinking aloud" in the book about both internalised prejudices and the prejudices of the wider writing community.

Some things are OK to cancel. No one is burning her books, they're just not printing them any longer.

It is a shame that it seems to have also done her students a disservice, that's the only sort of cancellation I care about.

@SantaClawsServiette

I mean, I remember people who were uncomfortable when The Glass Castle came out, because they felt like it showed homeless and poor people in a bad light, blamed them for their circumstances, made them look trashy.

It can be difficult to find the line, especially when people are basically being trained to go through every book (especially if you are a female author) and find excerpts that could be seen to be outside of what id pol allows.

But that book was autobiographical. I haven't read it , and don't intend to, but the precis online indicate the writer was justified in showing her feckless parents in a bad light.

If you are writing about real people who were children/minors when you interacted with them, is there no duty of care?

Well, no. No there isn't. (Excepting slander/libel). Freedom of expression covers rude, unpleasant and hurtful speech, too.

Unless we really want to limit our literature to writing that is utterly anodyne and devoid of any possible controversy, offense, or dissent, it's quite important that freedom of expression is protected. Slippery slope and all that.

That said, I've just thought - if Clanchy still is employed as a teacher, you might be right, Zimbolino. Apologies. I was thinking in terms of her being a writer. The role of teacher is different.

I mean, I can't quite picture writing about any of my students that way. But also, I am not a writer.

If I were going to write a book that was focused on what kinds of situations these kids were in, what poetry meant to them, where their lives were going, I think there probably isn't much point if you are going to pussyfoot it. Having worked with similar kinds of kids myself, lots of them are, like all of us, shaped deeply by their environment, and you can see that in the experiences they recount but also the way they speak, the kinds of lunches they bring ti school (or don't bring,) the way they dress. Anyone who says that there aren't class indicators that are readily apparent in some of these things, and which may correlate in some cases with poor outcomes is, as far as I can see, telling lies, to themselves if no one else.

The question of duty of care if she is still teaching these kids is a factor for sure, I'd have assumed something a publisher would be careful to have squared away but maybbe that didn't happen.

It is a good question, I suppose - can a teacher be honest/unflattering about their students? Can a doctor be honest/unkind about their patients?

I first came to Kate Clanchy because she posted the most, exquisite, sensitive, frankly incredible poems that her young students, mostly recent immigrants/refugees, had written, on Twitter. They absolutely blew me away, and it was clear from reading those that Clanchy was a very special teacher to bring out her students' poetry gifts like this.

And it was clear that to learn how to create poems like this and then see them liked by hundreds of people on Twitter, sometimes more, and then published, must be life-changing for those students.

So it's not a surprise that so many of these same students have spoken up in her defence.

This also makes it particularly offensive, stupid, and yes, genuinely racist to cancel the publication of the poetry book that their poems were going to feature in, when they must have been so excited. :(

Talk about hypocrisy. What is really going to wound those kids? Their teacher describing the colour of a child's skin or eyes in a way that is a bit cliched but otherwise fairly accurate? Or losing their only chance to see their eyes in print and widely reviewed/read??

@ArabellaScott

Precisely, Santa. If writers are afraid to be seen to be 'disrespectful', and publishers afraid to publish work that is 'unkind', what kind of work will we end up with?

Work that isn't disrespectful and unkind.

Not quite. Work that is careful not to be disrespectful and unkind.

And then we have the problem of who decides what is disrespectful and unkind. Shukria Rezaei said she found the description 'almond eyes' beautiful and resonant, so if Sensitivity Reader X decides it's 'disrespectful', does Shukria also lose the right to describe herself as having 'almond eyes'?

Just to add, after discovering Clanchy as what was clearly an incredible poetry teacher, I then read the book about her teaching experience (after it had won the Orwell prize but before anyone had 'noticed' the racism).

I didn't find the book racist, or ableist, or fattist. I'm Jewish and usually very sensitive to any hint of antisemitism in literature, but managed to not notice any here.

I think I was surprised it had won the award - but that's more down to what another poster described as its quite 1950s approach, it was definitely a book written by a white middle-class person for other white middle-class people, and presumed that the reader would not themselves have experience of being working class, or an immigrant, so she would need to explain it. Which as the child of refugees, felt kind of odd to me.

That said, what she was really writing about was the lessons she as a teacher and human being had learned about the class system and about structural racism in the UK. She couldn't have tackled those themes by not taking about the people impacted by them.

I think it is reasonable to argue whether a white middle-class person is the best person to make that point; maybe it would be better to get a member of an ethnic minority or a working class person to make those points themselves? But of course those books also exist, and it's had to criticise Kate Clanchy for that personally, given shehas dedicated her teaching career to amplifying the unheard voices of precisely those groups.

And one more point, albeit a minor one - I'm pretty sure she said the children she portrays are not only under different names but also in some cases composites. So I don't think it's as simple as one of the kids in it reading it and automatically thinking 'my teacher thinks I'm fat'. She will have taught thousands of kids at decades over multiple schools.

I first came to Kate Clanchy because she posted the most, exquisite, sensitive, frankly incredible poems that her young students, mostly recent immigrants/refugees, had written, on Twitter. They absolutely blew me away, and it was clear from reading those that Clanchy was a very special teacher to bring out her students' poetry gifts like this.

This is also how I came to her first, and I share your sentiments.

However, I’ve also seen it argued (by other poets and literary folk) that this was some sort of grandstanding or profiting off her students, that the way in which the poems were always presented in typography etc made them part of ‘Brand Kate Clancy’ rather than celebrating the individuals themselves.

I don’t agree. But it was a view already rumbling out there pre her success with ‘Some Kids’. In fact, writing ‘Some Kids’ and its subsequent success was undoubtedly in part because of her Twitter following being so successful due to her sharing their work. Would she have had the deal to write the memoir that has now brought about this sad state of affairs without the Twitter feed and its huge success that was built on these pupils? It’s sort of an awful irony of the situation that her current plight was all driven by social-media furore in the end.

Also to add, not that it's strictly relevant, but I follow her on Twitter. Which is that the cancellation of Clanchy's work happened shortly after had lost both of her beloved parents to Covid. Which must be pretty devastating.

The pile-ons looked pretty inhuman.

Hopefully, if she's got any sense, she'll self-publish all her works as soon as the copyright reverts to her, particularly including he poetry book containing her students' work (with the money for that going to the students or a charity, preferably), and maybe include an updated version of the book in question, with its more 'controversial' lines taken out (or leave it, if understandably, she doesn't want more flak).

It's kind of annoying that with all this publicity about her work in the papers, her publishers are actually benefitting from it before they hand back the copyright!

@NoSquirrels

I can kind of see what you mean...but I don't think she comes across as though she promoted the kids to raise her own profile, although it's true it did have that effect.

And I think claims of her creating a 'brand' are very unfair - the chances she just' found' that many wonderful ready-made poets from diverse backgrounds is non-existent. She helped create that - she taught them, and clearly really, really well, and as a teacher myself, I can say that that's certainly not something that just any teacher could get from their students, or that they could produce unaided.

Why shouldn't she benefit from what was not only a showcase for her students' writing talents but also her teaching talents??

Seriously?

As far as I am concerned, anyone who looks at the problems faced by schools today and thinks poetry workshops are he answer is out of touch by definition.

I first came across Kate Clanchy from a retweet by Joanna Harris about how ‘horrid it was to get negative reviews telling lies about you.’ (Paraphrasing)

On looking at the original tweet she had screenshoted the review From Goodreads and was appalled that someone could make up the racist comments. So she knew from the start that the comments were racist, just didn’t think they were in her book. Clanchy went as far as contacted the reviews employer to complain.

Problem is the comments were there. Big names came in to support her and people, especially WOC, who pointed out they were there were attached, which continued for a long time.

Clanchy then changed tack, saying the comments were taken out of context, and finally that they couldn’t be racist as she wrote them.

It a classic example of:
That didn't happen.
And if it did, it wasn't that bad.
And if it was, that's not a big deal.
And if it was, I didn't mean it.

Yes, she did eventually apologised but it took a long time.

I am not surprised the relationship with the publisher has become too difficult to continue. There were so many twists and turns that moving forward would be tricky. There were plans for the rewrite but I can see that could become very tense.

Everyone’s cancelling these women, yet the BBC proudly display works of rapist Eric Gill. Why can’t they cancel rapists first?

I like a lot of Clanchy's writing (and her students' writing). I've followed her on Twitter since long before this outrage. When she started tweeting that Goodreads reviewers were making up quotes to try and paint her as racist, I was horrified on her behalf.

And then people started posting photos from Clanchy's books, showing that these quotes weren't made up.

Clanchy did eventually apologise, but only after repeatedly lying and slandering her readers. As Vorpal says, Clanchy contacted the Goodreads reviewer's employer, claiming the reviewer had made these quotes up. Clanchy was the one who tried to 'cancel' someone. If that's come back round to bite her, so be it.

I agree xxyzz - I’m just pointing out that the accusations existed even prior to the furore, and it is a bit of a dubious area which has led to the ‘white saviour’ stuff.

Fwiw, when I read the book - which I thought was brilliant and insightful and fascinating in many ways - I did go ‘gosh, surprised she’s said/written that/been allowed to put that’ in a lot of places. But I found it brave rather than offensive, in that it’s increasingly unusual to read something that discusses things how they are, not how we wish they were. She seemed quite clear-sighted in her opinions. I did find it a bit old-fashioned in tone sometimes but I mostly thought about my parents, who were teachers, and would have agreed or empathised with a lot of the things she pointed out so clearly. The book makes it clear the children referred to are composites and on that basis I found a lot of the more ‘imagine if that was your child she’s talking about’ dramatic responses on Twitter to be overblown. But people respond to their own triggers and I understand that.

I’m happy to take on board that I’m probably one of the white middle-class who didn’t see the issues - or if I saw them didn’t adequately register them as problematic. And people were upset by her words/attitudes and that’s not OK. I like to think that if I’d been editing it my ‘wow, gosh, really?’ would have translated to asking pertinent questions in the edit but perhaps not. We’re none so blind as those that cannot see.

I feel deeply sorry for her. I think Picador have fucked up enormously all round on this. She handled it poorly too, but I think the communication from the publisher was the absolute worst. As you say, her parents died, she’s been coping with grief and then this. I’m still sure that anthology will go ahead with another publisher.

(Btw, rights have reverted immediately so Picador won’t be earning anything on sales from now. She tweeted as much yesterday when saying her books would all be withdrawn from Amazon with immediate effect. Books already in stock at shops etc will already have been accounted for in sales, but this new ‘publicity’ won’t make her or Picador any extra money.)

Hopefully, the anthology* due in March can still find an audience, even if it is self-published or released online.
*Friend: Poems by Young People
Clanchy talks about her ostracisation here:
www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/society-and-culture/ostracised-disinvited-rescinded-what-its-like-to-get-cancelled
I bought the memoir on the back of the Guardian excerpt the pp posted. I was surprised at the tone - it came across as patronising - have you started reading it yet OP?

@ArabellaScott

It is a good question, I suppose - can a teacher be honest/unflattering about their students? Can a doctor be honest/unkind about their patients?

They used to be - in school reports - but the desire to keep kids spirits up at all costs has ended this. It has also left with a cohort of under 35s who expect their feelings to be attended to at all times.

I'd dearly like to bring back the acidic teacher remarks.