"Most people ignore most poetry because most poetry ignores most people"
About this Quote
Mitchell’s line is a neat little boomerang: it starts as a complaint about the audience and returns as an indictment of the art. The repetition of “most” does the real work here. It drains the drama out of the culture-war question “Why don’t people read poetry?” and replaces it with something colder and more statistical: a mutual neglect that has hardened into habit. The structure feels almost like a law of gravity, suggesting this isn’t a moral failure of “the masses” but a systems problem built into how poetry is made, taught, and gatekept.
The subtext is classed, and deliberately so. Mitchell emerged as a public-facing, performance-minded poet in postwar Britain, suspicious of literature that treats ordinary life as unworthy material unless it’s been laundered into “proper” difficulty. When he says poetry “ignores most people,” he’s not just talking about subject matter; he’s talking about address. A poem can be technically about workers, lovers, war, grief, and still speak in a code that signals who belongs in the room. The result is predictable: audiences learn that poetry is where you go to feel stupid, not seen.
There’s wit in the symmetry, but also strategy. Mitchell reframes accessibility as an artistic obligation, not a concession to philistinism. If poetry wants public attention, it has to risk public contact: clearer speech, wider music, fewer insider rituals. The sting is that he makes poets responsible for their own irrelevance, then dares them to earn a different outcome.
The subtext is classed, and deliberately so. Mitchell emerged as a public-facing, performance-minded poet in postwar Britain, suspicious of literature that treats ordinary life as unworthy material unless it’s been laundered into “proper” difficulty. When he says poetry “ignores most people,” he’s not just talking about subject matter; he’s talking about address. A poem can be technically about workers, lovers, war, grief, and still speak in a code that signals who belongs in the room. The result is predictable: audiences learn that poetry is where you go to feel stupid, not seen.
There’s wit in the symmetry, but also strategy. Mitchell reframes accessibility as an artistic obligation, not a concession to philistinism. If poetry wants public attention, it has to risk public contact: clearer speech, wider music, fewer insider rituals. The sting is that he makes poets responsible for their own irrelevance, then dares them to earn a different outcome.
Quote Details
| Topic | Poetry |
|---|---|
| Source | Adrian Mitchell — quotation commonly attributed to him: “Most people ignore most poetry because most poetry ignores most people” (widely cited; see Wikiquote entry). |
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