Peter's claim may have been a little all-encompassing, but I don't
think he's far off the mark. Go into a good bookstore in another
(non-anglophone) country and see what British poetry is on display: in
my experience almost nothing but a bit of Hughes and recently in
Germany (oddly enough), Lavinia Greenlaw. Well not so odd, perhaps, as
she's married to Michael Hofmann who is German by origin and is
well-known in Germany as a translator of contemporary German
literature. By contrast there's quite a bit of American work easily
available, and not all by dead people.
The problem for non-native readers trying to find out about what goes
on here in Britain is that all easily available sources of information
(local literary journals, local publishing houses, the British Council)
peddle the conservative mainstream norms, mostly out of ignorance. It
would be great if they all had access to a *Conductors of Chaos* or an
*Other*, but they haven't. There's one atypical example of what can
happen if the trend is bucked: some 10 years ago Eliot Weinberger
edited an anthology of 20th century US poetry for the Mexican market.
It concentrated on what might be termed the New American Poetry-Plus
poets and contained original texts together with specially-commissioned
translations by a group of younger Mexican writers. The book went to
the top of the best-seller list, oddly enough, and a slightly different
version was later published in the US by Marsilio, minus the
translations of course. There's some evidence that the increased degree
of literary engagement across the US/Mexican border in the last decade
had something to do with that book.
A similar anthology of British 20C work starting with Bunting and
Jones, ending with the here and now, & published in Germany and France,
might correct some mistaken opinions.
Tony Frazer
On Saturday, August 2, 2003, at 02:48 pm, Iain Buccannon wrote:
> Peter,
> Sorry this is going back a bit but I'm intrigued by your confident
> assertion (Wed, 23 Jul 2003 11:10:23 +0100)that:
>
>> All over the world editors and readers think British poetry is
>> old-fashioned.
>
> I'm afraid I haven't looked at the Duncan book, but is this an
> assertion
> that is justified there or is it based on your own knowledge of
> editors and
> readers "all over the world"?
>
> best,
> Iain.
>
|