Dave,

you raise an important issue - one I suspect I shall meet head-on as I move
to London - class interests at the heart of publishing poetry (and hence
availability, as you suggest).

however, I am not sure class divisions are settled by creating (let alone
resolving) a dialectic between innovative/traditional verse.

i say this for several reasons, such as:

a) working class readers may enjoy the poems of, say, Armitage or Duhig
(traditionalists) which lay claim to subject matter (football, work, humour)
that is deemed suitable for "common folk" and use a strategy of plain
accessible language; whereas, the more difficult poetry of innovative
language poets may in fact appear academic, technical or elitist;

b) much traditional/light verse - the kind Tony Frazer often dislikes - say
by Auden - in fact has a socialist bent, and might even be written (though
not in Wystan's case) by non-Oxbridge types (Tony Harrison);  political
verse, such as Heaney's or Walcott's, aimed at de-colonizing power centres
with traditional verse expertise;

c) much innovative/modernist/post-modernist writing is/was created by
apolitical or even fascist poets, which rarely helps the underclasses;

d) socialist/worker's poetry is often deemed non-aesthetic by critics, or
unduly ideological; indeed, the personal as political content of much
"spoken word" would place it as alternative in one sense, but non-innovative
(in the sense of non-formalist, envelope-pushing linguistically) in another.

furthermore, except for rare exceptions, i find little or no poetry properly
available, as in widely stocked, widely read, maybe even free.  and
"available" itself is a problematic concept, since it suggests we need
market dissemination/penetration.  the commodification of poetry (which
brings with it brig prizes and publishing deals/hype) means those willing to
capitalize on the world-wide poetry/publishing systems can potentially
profit (see Muldoon).

i am not sure poets should continue to sell their poetry via
books/publishers - perhaps we will move to freely disseminated electronic
versions in the future; but don't misread me here - I am a professional poet
and editor and know the struggle of this life, and know poets' need
subventions/money to thrive.

one of the paradoxes is that "most people" like Larkin, Frost, Hardy,
Heaney, Plath: traditional versifiers, mostly available from big presses,
like Faber.  the audience for poetry is fragmented, and I am not sure it is
the readers' fault for their reluctance to "get" complex poetries.  this
does not mean I think poets should pander, like tv producers, to a
lowest-common-denominator, either.  but poetry communities need to work to
bring audiences and poets together in such a way that the seeming gulfs are
bridged.  one way to do this is for poetry publishers to work together,
instead of as competitors in a regular market.  for instance, during the
recent 100 poets against the war anthologies experience (which I edited for
nthposition.com, then Salt), I tried to get Faber & Faber to co-operate on
the launch and marketing of the book I edited, but instead, they swamped the
market with their own, far less progressive "101 Poems Against War", thus
partially drowning out an actually exciting poetic moment in the UK and
Ireland, where poets were generating interest among a grass-roots community
of millions of people and readers.  using competitive models, and shifting
units, may not work for big publishers.  perhaps we need to create more
interest in the fact of 21st century poetry as rich, heterogeneous, and
terribly exciting, among media and so on - but every sour review and
in-fight casts doubt on the authenticity of such a vision.

best

Todd



> I like the idea of the poetry world as a kind of failed sub-Saharan state,
> Todd, that made me smile. But have to take issue with:
>
> > While Muldoon, Duhig, Motion, or even Larkin etc., may not appeal to
some
> or all tastes, and may even represent an extreme alternative (the bland
one)
> compared to one's own "innovative" doctrine, it seems narrow and mean, and
> counter-productive, to constantly do war against them.  The reasons
> alternative poetries do not find their proper audience share (or whatever
> reasons render such bitterness) are not to be laid on the door-steps of
this
> anodyne mainstream, alone.<
>
> I don't think that is the point - my own feeling is that the problem lies
in
> availability - there is an audience out there but the stuff doesn't get
out
> to them and part of the cause for that is the conventionality of the
Larkins
> and Motions, this conventionality is grounded in the class-culture that
> infests Britland, and if anyone wants to deny that exists I'd ask them to
> reflect on how Oxbridge and the Royal Family can co-exist with a
democratic
> society. Larkin's letters make very clear the political hinterland of his
> writing, there certainly are some pieces of his I like, but the negative
> bias, he famously remarked on Hughes becoming Poet Laureate that it would
> shut him up, tame him, as it were, to go back to my point: alternative
> poetry here does not get to its potential audience because the publishing
> system reflects the class-nature of British society, you can even see the
> same exemplified in the stereotyped play of the English football or
cricket
> teams, the deadening conventionality and refusal of imagination cause
> players who are just as good as their opponents to act like robots most of
> the time while representing the nation. Occasionally they forget that,
which
> is allowed, which too again reflects the way this society works.
>
> Best
>
> Dave
>
>
>
> David Bircumshaw