Good points Tim. This goes back to the excellent point Nima made
earlier regarding "ethnic" stealing the action from "young." I know
Trevor Joyce has wrestled with this same problem with SoundEye: how to
make it inclusive of young innovative poets. I know he has made
strides here and would love to his take on it. Trevor?
Your perception that "the majority of posts are from people not
involved in 'postmodern' or 'innovative' British poetry" is
debatable. The majority of members are British, I would say. I'm
interested to know why you focus on British rather than British &
Irish here. That ampersand or "and" is material.
Mairead
On 8/28/05, [log in to unmask] <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Mairead,
>
> Of course the list has changed. It was always internationalist, something
> which people like myself welcomed and wanted, and wish to see continue. But
> it is also the case that the list has changed in that now the majority of
> posts appear to be from those not directly involved in 'postmodern' or
> 'innovative' British poetry. I don't want to quibble about the terms here
> though - i can foresee endless round the houses discussion coming up about
> such terms - and about the term British as well. However poor or misleading
> the terms might be, we know the fields of poetry they refer to - a large
> field and one with a hundred varieties, but a field with a limit
> nonetheless. This doesn't mean that everything in the field is rosy or that
> anything out of it is off limits - I have no interest in some of the things
> within the field and have many poetic interests that lie outside the field,
> but the core of my poetic interests lie within this field, which is why I
> subscribe. I do not subscribe to more general poetry lists, but it seems
> that the drift of this list is towards just that.
>
> Of course the change in the list is partly down to the fact that most of the
> British poets who we might bravely define as being postmodern or late
> modernists etc do not subscribe to the list. I know it bores a lot of them.
> Others simply don't like computers or are unaware of the list. I have met
> lots who have the wrong idea about what happens here because they logged on
> for five minutes three years ago or whatever. A highly respected innovative
> poet I know - oh did i really say that - said that the list was just a forum
> for a bunch of Prynneites and all I could say was, 'have you seen it
> recently?' But there is also the more long-term and serious reason - a
> certain generation, the generation of the British Poetry Revival etc, are
> becoming less in number - look at all the obituaries of such fine poets that
> have appeared here over the past few years...
>
> Tim A.
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