Hi Geraldine and Dave
Just picking up your reference to the considerable thing going on in Wales.
People's experiences differ. As a writer brought up and resident in Wales
and whose writing has drawn on Welsh topography and society (among other
things) I'll have poems published in 4 countries this year, none of them
Wales.
So the situation in Wales, and Ireland and, I suspect Scotland is pretty
mixed, with national allegiance only being one reason for publication or
otherwise. But I don't want to get into slagging off Wales or the poetry
that does get published. I just don't think the national boundaries mean
that much in these matters, or if they do it can tend to be negative.
I'm currently writing a series of bilingual 'englynion' which draw on my
English and Welsh vocabularies. They only follow the cynghanedd forms
vaguely as yet. They may never be published, but if they are it probably
won't be in Wales. One magazine in wales rejected some poems of mine with
bits of Welsh in some years ago because they thought some people wouldn't
understand the Welsh. Bizarre response in a bilingual country. I wouldn't
have minded if they had just said they thought they weren't good enough.
I try not to spend any time thinking about it all, but when I do think about
it it seems odd.
And Randolph Healey's bit in Boundary 2 Spring 1999 on Anglo Irish poetry
is very well worth reading.
And as it's all about poetry here are a couple of englynion. The first one
is trilingual.
Claddu 2
still shallow grave impression – bankrupt
celtic knot ein cwlwm ni
in celtic not nor bottle
all directions tout direct
Commodity Capitalism
the wisdom of poverty - uneven
riches or anger towards
spending gives more short term pain
than labouring or clock on
Ian
>From: "david.bircumshaw" <[log in to unmask]>
>Reply-To: "david.bircumshaw" <[log in to unmask]>
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: Re: (no subject)
>Date: Sat, 30 Nov 2002 20:50:55 -0000
>
>Hi Geraldine
>
>I've been pondering this post of yours for several days, I'm not sure about
>the adequacy of my response, my immediate thought was and is that the
>problem with 'Englishness' in relation to poetry is the embededness, the
>intensity of our class-culture. It's not that such problems don't exist in
>other societies, but here the entrenchment is unique. When one does see
>anthologies of mainly English poets there is a uniformity of tone, whether
>'mainstream' or 'avant-garde' that speaks Oxbridge-London or, equally, the
>crappo dumbdowns of 'performance'.
>
>This is an uncaring society, you can see its results on the streets, our
>frigid toned Queen is its perfect emblem, and voice belongs not to the
>'english' but to those of an appropriate social standing. I saw a thing the
>other day where a certain Poet Laureate recommended a festival run by a
>certain individual as the 'best in England'. I have had the misfortune to
>meet that individual and it is a self-seeking talentless egotistic
>mercenary
>bastard on the grandest of scales. But it has all the right social
>credentials.
>
>I'm not comfortable about the adequacy of my reply, there is just too much
>gunge involved in these issues.
>
>Best
>
>Dave
>
>
>
>David Bircumshaw
>
>Leicester, England
>
>Home Page
>
>A Chide's Alphabet
>
>Painting Without Numbers
>
>http://homepage.ntlworld.com/david.bircumshaw/index.htm
>----- Original Message -----
>From: "Geraldine Monk" <[log in to unmask]>
>To: <[log in to unmask]>
>Sent: Friday, November 29, 2002 1:56 AM
>Subject: Re: (no subject)
>
>
> > > anyhow, i'm teaching a course on irish lit next january and am loading
>the
> > > first half heavily with modernists. but after beckett i get a bit
>stuck.
> > >> i'll be very grateful for any ideas
> > >
> > > many thanks
> > >
> > > stuart allen
>
>Hello Stuart - apologies for riding on the back of your query but your
>request has just sparked a thought which has been nagging away at the back
>of mind for some time now.
>There are many-many studies and seminars and think tanks and anthologies of
>Irish poetry and the Welsh and Scots have their own considerable thing
>going. But the English - as an ethnic group - are rarely considered on
>their own. So, for example, one upshot of this is that the countries
>surrounding England (or, in the case of the Scotland ruling England! ) have
>their own anthologies which us downtrodden English are not allowed to be
>part of but the ones we are allowed to be part of - well - we have to share
>with the Irish (and not just the Northern Irish!) the Scots and the Welsh.
>Now apart from being insanely jealous at all the attention that lot are
>getting I think there is actually a genuine oversight going on here.
>The huge change in social economic and class structures has 'allowed'
>(fought for at Peterloo and on the picket lines) a whole generation and
>gender of English kids from none mid/upper classes to strut their stuff -
>almost coinciding with a whole generation of second generation born here
>English kids from the Carrabean and Asia and Poland, and etc against a
>backdrop of the old university cliques and the occasional breakaway
>wild-child.
>What a subject for a young academic - something that no one else has given
>a
>damn about - or is that that the subject is still too touchy - is it still
>too early to be able to say you're English (if you're white) without it
>being taken as a statement of racial prejudice or branded a National
>Fronter. Or is it just too complex. Or has it been written about at length
>and I was too busy reading about the buggering(s) about of the royal butler
>and all things beginnig with B,
>Carry on up the Khyber,
>G.
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