David Kennedy wrote:

> I think that Davids Bromige and Bircumshaw describe a recognisable
landscape
> but overstate their points so as to make them disputable.

I can't speak for t'other David B here but in my case that is absolutely
true.
>
> Since we are obviously forced to keep on using the terms 'mainstream' and
> 'avantgarde' here some random thoughts.
>
> (1) It is not only poets in the 'mainstream' who have overblown
reputations.
> It is not only the 'mainstream' that constantly recycles and repackages
the
> same small group of names.
>
Yup.

> (2) The comment about Auden is a bit wide of the mark. He has been a
> significant influence on a number of younger 'mainstream' poets who came
to
> prominence in the 1980s and 1990s and clearly do not write a safe, largely
> Movement derived poetry of a single unified voice. Sean O'Brien, for
> example, and Glyn Maxwell - well, his first two books at any rate.

Well I do hold to the gist of my comments on mr WH but don't have time to
detail what I meant right now (see below), will try to do so in the week.
>
> (3) Please fit the following poets into either 'mainstream' or
'avantgarde':
> Bill Herbert, Maggie Hannan, John Ash, John Welch, Peter Reading, John
> Hartley Williams. The work of all these reveals the uselessness of the two
> categories.

These flowers are hybrids.
>
> (4) I've thought long and hard before saying this: the introductions to
> Other and to the Bloodaxe New Poetry which I co-edited are making the same
> arguments - localness, fragmentation, plurivocity - about different
> poetries. Again I think this reveals the uselessness of the two categories
> and the bankruptcy of the vocabulary we habitually use to discuss poetry.

I think that with these categories, as with the language we use to describe
social divisions, we are limited by an inherited vocabulary that describes
situations which obtained several generations ago. 'Avantgarde' in
particular is cringeworthy, and available alternatives do not seem
satisfactory (I find the phrase 'linguistically innovative poetry' a wee bit
too academic & almost prim) however, it does seem to me that there are
certain 'voices', commentators as much as poets, within the 'mainstream'
that aspire to the notion of a 'centre'. That it no longer exists is
irrelevant, it's that they maintain it as metaphor.
>
> (5) Lawrence Upton posted a useful article - I forget where - about the
> uselessness of the word 'experimental'. This should focus us all on
finding
> better terminology/ies. I suggest that we start some threads on
> british-poets similar to those on poetryetc2 e.g. postings about poetics,
> form etc.

Hear, hear.
>
> (7) The 'exclusion' that David Bircumshaw talks about is often self-made
and
> self-perpetuating.

Altho' there's truth in this is it not also the case that individuals &
groups 'import' self-definitions and language-maps of exclusion from the
responses they perceive/receive from the world/s they encounter?
>
>
> But enough: I've got to get to the market early to get the best fish.

So I have I too, curiously enough.

> Cheers
> David

Cheers, David (!)
>
>
>
>



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