(Here's a rant of misreading recent britpo issues..)
"Taking the UK as a whole, the M & E debate is specious. The hughesheaney
saga has a validity, tho fer critsakes to time-transpose d.thomas into their
retinue as an E that went M reduces the argument. What's relevant is what
the lit-machine did within the time that it did it, it occludes so many,
this is the angst to all those speaking now, this is the nub which we're
trying to redress aint it? The carnivalesque up-take of dthomas sank the
deeper, richer and more renegade poets and their poetry from view, and did
this give credence to the acceptance of the movement endorsing such a thing
as the prevailing mainstream since 1960? It was much cruder and
personalities were an issue here.
Did the death of thomas, just to embark on a conspiracy theory, provoke a
neil kinnock type of welsh backlash? Did the hellraising and sexual antics
of thomas shame the po-faced english? Did the death of a great experimenter
issue forth in the english ranks, I told you so, generous and great orator
or not we must never allow experimentation happen to british letters again,
hence the Movement. However what is far more disappointing are the late
40's early 50's mavericks whom to my mind were greater innovators, who had
richer gifts and were equally gifted with fine syllable/metric &
alliterative-crafts, utterance and experiments beyond that which the gamy,
piss-taking, frivolous d.thomas sold out to? Was it all for a beer or a
fuck? If so that's as equal to my mind as p.riley's punchanyoneintheface
mentality - rosemary tonks, nicholas moore, lynette roberts, ws graham,
vernon watkins, the later work of david jones, bunting, rf.langley,
ft.prince, hs davies, et al - are whom that inchoate media-machine occluded
& is still doing now! The British prefer the missionary position it's
easier & therefore the easiest, the less challenging and fewer options
there are the better. heaneyandhughes are just the simple fucks... ...an'
gawd ferbid it's gotta be masculata-heterosexual and white... ...remember
what tom raworth said of larkin: it was just a typo and should have read:
"They tuck you up your mum and dad."
Another disparity could exist with the British predilection for the focus on
a single poem, not the collection or oeuvre, the best selling poetry books
at the moment are the 'Poems on the Underground' series. Ovid & Beowulf were
just mercantile ploys, academic five-finger-exercises. The _tabula rasa_ of
heaney's 'squarings' could have bridged deeper analysis of historical
schematics into the syllabic&alchemic religiopolitics of NI, but hell let's
not touch the root of violence. We'll give 'em the barbarity of Beowulf's
time... ...like a social metaphorosis it's safer... ...and on another
mainstream note why hasn't the now 86 year old rs.thomas (tht syllabic
giant) been given the noble, why was heaney, & before I scream, what abot
tht idiot leaureate motion's use of violence for melodramatic effect: Noble?
isn't that a prize awarded from the loot of explosives?
Anyone seen John Wilkinson lately, now there's the man for
'punchanyoneintheface' quip." His poetry does it to me every time. Sheer
violence!
(Here's as I understand it the chief nub of Britpo recently raged..)
Really, most of British poetry publishing and performance in the last 40
years is and has been in an astonishing mess. Have these conditions been a
consequence of the Welfare State? Until very recently most poetry here
in Britain <all provinces> has existed in the realm of the hobbyists, making
much of the small-press inconsequential and has endangered, both poetry or
poets, without educational status, merit, critical attention or professional
standing. Is the 'experimental or innovative' a tag for the hobbyist and the
'mainstream' a tag for those endorsed as professionals?
On another tack I'd like to bring to your attention a stunning recent
publication: 'Pharmacopoeia' by Elisabeth Blestsoe, from Terrible Workpress,
21 Overton Gardens, Mannamead, Plymouth - £2.95
& can anyone tell me where do you get the wild honey pamphlets?
& Dewdney
& Birchard are among my favourite Canadians.
love light and clarity if not alacrity,
chris ozzard
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