> The gatekeeping, obscurantist mindset that has taken over in contemporary poetry North America and the UK are now at least two decades into trends like slam

> The gatekeeping, obscurantist mindset that has taken over in contemporary poetry North America and the UK are now at least two decades into trends like slam poetry being ascendant, i.e. poetry that emphasizes being accessible to the public, tackling real-world hardships and political struggles, etc. The publishing decisions of major poetry presses like Faber & Faber are now largely centered around that. Sure, there are still more hermetic or ivory-tower poets around but the heyday of their influence was only up to about the 1980s or 1990s. Nowadays they are mainly publishing in small-press editions that few people will even see copies of (especially due to the death of the bookstore), let alone read.