Verse Dramatist Glyn Maxwell

British poet and verse dramatist Glyn Maxwell (Wolfpit, The Heart in Hiding, Broken Journey, Anyroad) laments the state of modern poetic drama in an article from the The Independent:

A sceptic might wonder whether Maxwell isn't trudging up a cul-de- sac. His drama, like that of his hero Auden, may be dwarfed by his verse. Maxwell argues he's a better playwright than Auden, that he has been improving rapidly, and no one has noticed because the poetry and theatre scenes are indifferent to each other.

"I started writing plays almost as an academic exercise," he explains. "I began with a vast number of characters because I had lots of actor friends in my home town. We put on performances in my parents' garden. I took Shakespeare as my model and made the same mistakes as the Victorians and the Romantics. All my characters were equally articulate. The search now is to render a contemporary sound, however inarticulate, within a verse framework."