It'd be just my luck to get the bleedin' Titanic.
What the hell's going on this debate? In which I seem to be a Third Party
present.
fuckwitted by my server no doubt
david birc
----- Original Message -----
From: David Kennedy <[log in to unmask]>
To: british & irish poets <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Thursday, August 10, 2000 3:08 PM
Subject: millenialism
> I'm not quite sure if Lawrence is disagreeing with my response to David
> Bircumshaw or just saying that it needs to be said more complexly.
>
> My comment about the Arts Council was a rather inept attempt to focus on
the
> fact that the economic context remains essentially unchanged.
>
> I used the phrase 'recent economic opportunism' because in my experience
it
> is only recent i.e I've only been involved in poetry in various ways since
> the mid 1980s so can only comment on that period. Lawrence obviously has a
> longer view.
>
> My parents have also often poo-poohed the idea of WW2 togetherness. Beyond
> anecdote, its fictionality has been comprehensively discussed in books
like
> Angus Calder's The People's War and Pete Grafton's You You and You.
>
> If things are changing, then I'm not sure where or how. Speaking about the
> area of activity I know best - the so-called, so-imagined mainstream - I
did
> think things were changing when I was co-editing The New Poetry now I'm
not
> sure. Or rather I don't like the way they've changed.
>
> I do agree that it's our condition to live inside change and that that
makes
> it impossible to stand outside it and see it happening. But I reject what
> seems to be an underlying 'The Titanic sails at dawn' tone in David
> Bircumshaw's original post because I still feel positive about poetry
> through my own expanded reading. I still think the most important work is
> done by readers. And we could argue about how 'useful' or 'effective' that
> work is but that would perhaps be a different sort of argument.
>
> I'm off to bed now.
> cheers
> David
>
>
>
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