100 signatures reached
To: Jonty Claypole, BBC Director of Arts
BBC - Diversify your poetry programming!
The BBC's National Poetry Day schedule focuses largely on white, male poets, despite a wealth of women writers and writers of colour. We want this to be diversified to include a more even gender balance and to include more writers of colour. We also ask that the BBC responds to our petition and apologises for this oversight.
Why is this important?
Writers who are not white men have contributed hugely to our understanding and appreciation of poetry, and it is unforgivable and unrepresentative to exclude them from a national celebration of poetry.
Women and people of colour have been consistently ignored, sidelined and poorly treated in academic and arts circles, often not being taken as seriously as white men doing the same things as us to a similar or even lower standard.
As TV licence fee payers, we have a right to be fairly represented and to see ourselves - and a true reflection of the arts world - in the programming we pay for.
