"But I can't help about the "laziness and bad
manners" of poets who eschew clarity, because I can't
for the life of me recall saying it. "
Hello Sheenagh - My point was that I thought your views on this (judge's
speech, Dearmer prize, last year) were very pertinent to this list and well
presented. They seemed to speak out against certain obscurites without
being antipluralist. To paraphrase and simplify (sorry) your main point,
you spoke about an onus on the poet to take the reader into consideration.
"As for what I think of the list, I do think there's a
cliquey feel to some of it, mainly caused by the fact
that a few people seem to be able to spend all day
doing little but reading it and writing to it. They
must have very accommodating bosses! But your response
of, more or less, "bugger off then", seems illogical -
if everyone who feels like an outsider did that,
wouldn't it be even more cliquey?"
It's not cliquey just because some are more active than others (I'd guess
this is because many - not me - are members of several poetry lists).
Also, some of us are lucky enough to be our own bosses. Don't want you to
bugger off at all - this list has few enough UK poets, especially ones who
are broadly mainstream. But you were just a tiny bit rude...
best
Roddy
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