>This exchange made me sit up. Not because of the American link, in fact I
>suspect that the people Roddy excludes from "British" are perhaps most
>recognised as such in the US. Or am I wrong?

Okay, Chris, let's knock a nail on the head straight away - I did not
'exclude' anyone.  You have to have been reading sloppily, or wishfully, to
have come to that conclusion.  My point (again) was that for most readers,
writers, critics, a term like 'British poetry' equates to a certain,
'central' type of British poetry, particularly those who might be including
a handful of UK poets in a 'standard' American anthology (this was the
thread).  Other styles are just not in the diagram, not just your own, but
much of my work too.

>What really made me sit up was this notion of invisibility. And the
>encampments of comfy new gen versus barking avants (the hyperbole all
mine).
>Here's that super list again:
>
>Tom Raworth, Allen Fisher, Denise Riley, cris cheek, Maggie
>O'Sullivan, Grace Lake, Peter Riley, Andrew Duncan, Wendy Mulford, Alan
>Halsey, Tony Lopez, Drew Milne, Geraldine Monk, Doug Oliver, Ken Edwards,
>John Wilkinson, Aaron Williamson, Caitriona Strang, Rod Mengham, Barry
>MacSweeney, Helen MacDonald, Bill Griffiths, Gael Turnbull, Fiona
Templeton,
>Tim Allen, David Annwn, Tertia Longmire, Gavin Selerie


Well, what struck me most about Randolph's list was its very selectivity.
To my knowledge, only two of the list have been recently published by the
commercial or large specialist publishers and these are the recently
deceased MacSweeney and Oliver.  Is Randolph's point that all these poets
deserve to be published by the bigger publishers - to combat that
invisibility?  Not his main point, I think; why include some Bloodaxe poets
if so?  Why is there no room on the list for those other 'linguistically
innovative' poets who are published by them?  Why no Maggie Hannan, surely
one of the finest new poets within this area?  Why is Gael Turnbull on the
list and not his fellow Scot of similar vintage and outlook, G F Dutton?
Because they are published by Bloodaxe?  Would Prynne have been on the list
until last year?  Have Oliver and MacSweeney been reclaimed as invisible,
post-mortem?

I suspect that its the very invisibility, forced or otherwise, that is
crucial to some (*some*) followers of the left-field.  I know as teenage
boys, we would drop a band the moment they had a hit record.  Why are Iain
Bamforth and Miles Champion not on this list - because they have taken
Michael Schmidt's shilling?  Carcanet publish many 'innovative' poets,
Bloodaxe quite a few.  Is Sinclair too 'famous' to be on the list?  And when
we move slightly towards the centre, there are other strata of poets who it
would be galling to claim aren't 'innovative' or adventurous.  Don't you
think there are such qualities in the work of Bloodaxe poets such as John
Hartley Williams, Selima Hill, Glyn Maxwell, Ian Duhig, Medbh McGuckian,
Peter Didsbury, David Constantine, WN Herbert, Pauline Stainer.  Even among
my fellow Scots, is the innovative work of Morgan, Leonard, Graham to be
deemed unadventurous because they also wrote more 'mainstream' work and have
had mainstream plaudits and publication?   Look too at all the interesting
and unusual (often foreign) work published by Peter Jay at Anvil.
'Linguistic innovation' is only one of many 'innovations' and 'adventures'.
How about those who are extending a poetry of ideas, or admitting cadences
of language or subject matter formerly estranged from any poetry?  How about
those whose poetry extends ideas of philosophy, religion or sexuality?
Those who write in Scots or dialect or Gaelic or Welsh?

I expect most of the poets on the above list do not crave 'mainstream
attention' - they're not looking for the Cape deal.  cris cheek made these
points to me very clearly when we talked about mainstream and publishing a
few months back.  I was arrogant in assuming that left-field poets wanted
the same attention and formats and responses as I do as a mainstream poet
and an interloper in the performance field.  Now you expect me to feel sorry
for them because they're not reviewed in the Observer?  Jeez.  If we were to
choose yourself and Randolph as the PBS selectors, we would just have a 180
degree turn round.  The results wouldn't be any more democratic.  And
besides, most PBS members would stop their subscriptions.  Sad but true.
'Verse' just about went under after its LANGUAGE issue, with all the
complaints and cancelled subscriptions.

I'm never going to agree with Adrian Mitchell's dictum about most poetry
ignoring people (his poetry has always ignored me, for a start), but if
one's writing foregoes so much of traditional form, moves away from speech
patterns, messes with syntax, uses outré vocabulary etc, you simply can't
expect it to warrant empathy.  How would I go about reviewing your work
Chris?  It seems to defy criticism, which is surely one of its points.  Or
Champion's say, whose work is so based on random images, cut-up techniques
and raw vocab strung together?  Editors are unlikely to hand me work to
review by any of the above: I don't choose what I review.  I found Brian
Henry's book very illuminating.  It met me halfway, but I expect he's a
mainstream pussycat to most on the list above.

Many of the 'institutions' on your 'how many' list exist to serve readers /
members / listeners.  They are not there to serve poets and their fashions
and movements.  I don't doubt that 'innovative' work receives less attention
from these places.  Does it ask for it though, or does its vitality demand
it?  On your list, couldn't we just replace 'Voice Box' with 'Subvoicive',
'The Firebox' with 'Conductors of Chaos' or 'Other'.  Do you feel that such
meetings, such anthologies would gladly cease to exist if the South Bank and
Macmillan were more inclusive?

Here's another list - all of contemporary British and Irish poets who could
be thought of as vaguely mainstream - all very talented, but who wouldn't
score much higher on your list of questions than Randolph's would, despite
publication in many cases by mainstream and commercial publishers:

Connie Bensley, Sujata Bhatt, Kate Bingham, Colette Bryce, Matthew Caley,
Julia Copus, Kwame Dawes, Greg Delanty, Nick Drake, John Glenday, Chris
Greenhalgh, Vona Groarke, Paul Henry, Tracey Herd, John Hughes, Brian Jones,
David Kinloch, Stephen Knight, Marion Lomax, Angela MacSeveney, Alice
Oswald, Katherine Pierpoint, Tom Pow, Justin Quinn, Richard Price, Deryn
Rees-Jones, Neil Rollinson, Anne Rouse, Peter Sansom, John Stammers, Greta
Stoddart, Frances Williams, David Wheatley, Gerard Woodward, Tamar Yoseloff.

I don't doubt that 'power' is a factor here.  But we're talking the poetry
world, petty stuff, powerwise.  Power here is largely about readership and
'curatorship'.  Most of the UK poetry readership finds *my* published work
baffling and obscure!  At least in the UK, we have a chance of dialogue,
interchange, changes of heart and mind.  We're not yet in the American
situation where people rarely read outside of their own sphere (caused by
numbers as much as blinkers).  Most of my peers, I'm afraid, would shrug off
your concerns, disinterested.  'Barking avants' it would be, yes, no doubt.
Anyway, this is a long post - I wan't to listen to what others have to
say...

Roddy



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