I'm sorry Paul, but that footnote sounds very much like:
"Some of my best friends are homosexuals."
If you get what I mean.
Mostly in jest.
Emma.
On 8/22/05, Paul Green <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Mairead & Susan don't seem to understand that my proposal is quite modest,
> - in the Swiftian sense.
>
> But first let's get one thing straight. Of course, there are myriads of
> young non-white writers out there in the UK, following the slow implosion of
> the empire. Many of them are brilliant. (Hari Kunzru) A few are are dire.
> (B Zephaniah) More and more of them are getting published. The language is
> changing, the times they are a changing and the "non-white poets" are
> mapping all this. Great. I applaud. Honestly.
>
> But there are several sub-texts in my suggestions for filling in the grant
> form:
>
> 1) The assumptions of Arts Bureaucrats that a person's ethnicity is the most
> important thing about them. Many non-white writers find that there's a whole
> baggage of expectations foisted on them by well-meaning liberals. They
> become spokespersons, even icons, for the whole group, like it or not. Cf
> Harold Cruse, "Crisis of the Negro Intellectual". I bet if you had a young
> poet of colour in Hereford writing in the style of Charles Bernstein, they'd
> say he was "unrepresentative of the community". Thye'd want him to be B
> Zephaniah ( see above)
>
> 2)The assumptions of ABs that what matters most in a poetry funding
> application are:
>
> The business plan
>
> The marketing plan
>
> The notion of a target audience in a particular demographic.
>
> They also like things to be "accessible" to the "community". Populism is
> good, difficult work is "elitist" and very bad.
>
> My proposal was designed to press all those buttons. Susan may think it's
> preposterous, but these attitudes underlie a lot of the cultural activity in
> the UK, both by those giving out the bread and those seeking it.
>
> 3) The increasing emphasis on the writer's lifestyle as unique selling
> point for the brand. Barthes may have written about the death of the
> author, but increasingly for Mr & Mrs Consumer the author's life and
> iconography are everything, the text is a fashion accessory.
>
> Footnote:
>
> "racist?" Sure. In 1979, I was fronting bands in Rock Against Racism
> gigs, dodging the NF skinheads' gobbing and bottles. Also spent almost a
> decade working in inner city mixed race schools, fifty four languages. My
> ace student last year (media) was LOndon Hindu girl(blind) , made
> brilliant little radio doc about female Sikh rapper in Birmingham. She
> didn't think I was racist, just crazy...
>
>
> > From: mairead byrne <[log in to unmask]>
> > Reply-To: mairead byrne <[log in to unmask]>
> > Date: Sun, 21 Aug 2005 23:51:39 -0400
> > To: [log in to unmask]
> > Subject: Re: "ethnic" writers
> >
> > Dear All,
> >
> > There definitely is a cultural divide here. I have not contributed
> > thus far, on the ground that I don't know much about the scene in
> > British poetry, being Irish and based in the U.S. I'm based in the
> > U.S. because I wanted cultural diversity in poetry; that's why I came
> > here: because there were multiple strong traditions; I was especially
> > interested in Afro-American poetry, and increasingly, history too.
> > America just seemed rich in poetry to me, an English speaker, and
> > Ireland thin. My understanding hasn't really changed. England is
> > something else again, and I'm not qualified to talk about it. In the
> > context I'm in, I would receive Geraldine's annoyance as a bit
> > baffling, and Paul's identikit proposal as quite racist. I don't know
> > the English situation though. As there are people of many
> > nationalities on the list, I'm probably not alone in my ignorance.
> > I'm listening: but the way the education is being delivered is
> > certainly unfamiliar and off-putting.
> >
> > There is little or no funding for arts organizations/poetry publishing
> > in the U.S. There is very little funding for the arts at all. I
> > think I would see the scenario of "you can have some money but we want
> > you to publish some young poets who aren't white" as a good
> > opportunity. Or else I might say: "time to call it a day." I don't
> > necessarily see the outrage, but that is probably because there is
> > little or no funding for poetry here.
> >
> > I'd be interested to know what the Irish poets on the list think, as
> > funding in Ireland probably relates more to funding in England than
> > funding in the US does. How people express themselves about race is
> > country-specific too. Hence my finding Geraldine's and Paul's
> > approaches hard to take.
> >
> > It's good that the focus is on British & Irish poetry; that's the
> > purpose of the list. But the membership not being homogeneous, there
> > isn't necessarily an ease of audience. For me, it's good to hear
> > Susan's challenging voice; by and large I relate to what she says.
> >
> > Mairead
> >
> >
> > On 8/21/05, Susan Webster Schultz <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> >> I confess that I haven't been following this or any thread well, of
> >> late; I was away much of the summer
> >> from my perch in the mid-pacific. While the notion that funders can
> >> demand certain kinds of poetry is
> >> disturbing (if hardly, I imagine, unheard of), I'm finding these latest
> >> posts disturbing, to put it mildly.
> >> Yes, Geraldine, I think that your experience of the marginalization of
> >> women's poetry is instructive,
> >> not because women were always a majority, hence unfairly unpublished,
> >> but because there are so many
> >> wonderful writers of color who still do not find it easy to be
> >> published. The most recent description
> >> of a hypothetical publishable poet by Paul Green is preposterous! To
> >> make your "argument" this way is to close
> >> yourself off to the truth that there are terrific poets out there who
> >> fulfill the criteria of non-white a
> >> nd excellent poets. I spend much of my life these days publishing
> >> non-white excellent poets
> >> (let us call them nwe's for short). I'm perpetually blown away by the
> >> excellence of these nwe's.
> >>
> >> Please check out the website:
> >>
> >> http://tinfishpress.com
> >>
> >> for more details. But don't stop there! Salt has diversified its list,
> >> now publishing indigenous work. I wonder
> >> at the necessity of separating such poets off into their own series, but
> >> nonetheless, it's a good step forward.
> >> American poetry publishers like Atelos, like Apogee, like Coffee House,
> >> are presenting lists that don't exclude
> >> and don't make noise about not excluding, either. They simply publish
> >> good books.
> >>
> >> So let's cut the crap. It reminds me of the Time magazine cover the
> >> other year. Time came up with a computer
> >> generated mixed race face to show what the "face of America" would be in
> >> coming decades. Someone wrote in
> >> and said, why the computer mock-up when you can come to Hawai`i where
> >> everyone looks like that? Well,
> >> everyone writes poetry these days, and a hell of a lot of it's good. If
> >> you want to complain about funding policies,
> >> go ahead. But don't do so in ways that suggest you think the only good
> >> poets to fund are white. Or that non-white
> >> poets have to be "made up."
> >>
> >> aloha, Susan
> >>
>
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"Ira furor brevis est." ( Horace)
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