Hi Matthew
In fact I was responding to Doug's remarks about Basil Bunting. It's true
that Bunting suffered neglect. It's also true, however, that when people
such as Tom Pickard came across his work they made efforts to get a hearing
for it, and that the Anvil edition of Briggflatts appeared in the 1960s and
was widely discussed and read. It is also true that the work of Andrew
McAllister among others (see the BETE NOIRE interview) helped to renew
attention to Bunting's work towards the end of his life.
It is true that in old age Bunting struggled (as, to our shame, do numerous
old people, poets or not),
but it is also true that Northern Arts, the regional arm of the English Arts
Council, established the Northern Arts Literary Fellowship, with a fee and a
house, in order to help Bunting make ends meet. It is also true that one of
the 'establishment' figures who didn't publish Bunting was T.S. Eliot with
his Faber and Faber hat on. Funny, that. Could have sworn Eliot was a
modernist. That's the Eliot from the Fabers which published Philip Larkin.
Hmm.
As to 'British Modernism', you could indeed read this as an oxymoron, since
the term
'British' no longer has any useful application to the several literatures
written in English on this
side of the Atlantic, though it is sometimes brandished like an insult by
people
who might be expected to know better, some of whom might well be a bit
pissed off were anyone to suggest that, for example, 'Canadian literature'
also sounds like an oxymoron. Which of course it isn't, but the insult is
easy to deliver, and to do so would help perpetuate the thoughtless
antagonism Poetryetc presumably exists to avoid.
Best wishes
Sean
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