Sean's conflation of inaccuracies and near truths (resulting from ignorance
I'm sure, rather than design) makes the Northern Arts look like a
responsible organisation. Maybe Sean has good reason to do that, I don't
know...but the half truths disguise some bitter and unpalatable truths. I'd
suggest he read Bunting's presidential addresses to his 'benefactor's at
Northern Arts, an organisation which today displays a degree of nepotistic
coterieism that would even dismay a world weary old lag like BB.
The Northern Arts Literary Fellowship was indeed given to BB for 2 years but
it was and is set up to parachute writers into the otherwise talentless
wastes of the North. As a beneficiary of that scheme I was disappointed Sean
omitted to 'declare an interest' before trumpeting Northern Arts praises. In
fact Bunting had to go to USA to earn a substantial living well into his old
age. It was very hard going for him, but it was the support he received from
America (friends, admirers and institutions) that bolstered him financially
until he was too frail to travel.
The 'house' that Northern Arts made available to Bunting was in a place that
he described as "an intentional slum", midway between motorways, and it was
one of the bleakest periods of his life, because of it.
This is not to say that there wasn't an occasional sympathetic 'literary
officer' at Northern Arts who tried to help BB, but that can not paper-over
the period of shame and neglect, and the contempt they held for him.
It wasn't Anvil, it was Fulcrum published Briggflatts in 1965
Best wishes
Tom Pickard
----- Original Message -----
From: "Sean O'Brien" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Tuesday, April 10, 2001 8:20 AM
Subject: Re: Briggflats' concluding 'we'
> 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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