Tim wrote:
>I was brought up working class - having to listen to
>the prejudices of my own class is bad enough but when I have to hear those same
>prejudices filtered and inverted through the weird minds of middle class
>hypocrites I want to scream.


i've noticed with my outsider-to-europe eyes, that it's becoming a social-political nostrum now to say that social mobility in the UK slowed in the eighties, then slowed down even more in the nineties - 

i.e. the nostrums came out for a latest airing again this week with the revelation of 14 public school children in the Tory shadow team

- but does this slowing reflect on the people who become students & then practitioners in avant circles through the universities? 

i believe the next Quid will present essays on poetry & Class so perhaps we could all buy one and discuss it. 

melissa 



>From: [log in to unmask]
>Reply-To: [log in to unmask]
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: Re: ramblings
>Date: Fri, 6 Oct 2006 08:58:02 EDT
>
>I must try to respond to Roger's rambling post, nobody else has but what he
>says there is both symptomatic and fairly representative of a certain take. It
>is full of subjective perceptions but I am not belittling those, I think they
>need to be addressed, I think they have a basis, right or wrong. It convinces
>me even more about the importance of this topic re academia and poetry - you
>know that out there, in the world, in the pub, in the telephone conversation,
>in the great bc so to speak, people say things re this sort of topic that they
>would not say in print. They give opinions about certain individuals and their
>practises. No good denying this, they do it - the unrecorded discursive soup
>that solidifies into blocks of experience.
>
>Roger says:
> >"Cris is right that the Avante Garde (in the UK) has moved into the
>class-room, and it moved into it a while ago."<
>
>Come on Roger, yes and no. Some of it moved into universities, but not all of
>it, a lot stayed out, for many different reasons. It is no good saying stuff
>like 'the avant garde moved into the classroom' as though that were it This
>is what its detractors say when they want to invoke the class bogie, when they
>want to prejudice the case against it by tactically associating it with
>something they know people won't like. It is cynical, but very effective. This makes
>me so cross. Middle class people educated in Universities and appreciative of
>learning in general with its certificates and kudos use the idea that there
>is something wrong with avant poetry BECAUSE it might have a little enclave
>within academia. The hypocrisy is complete. It is widespread. They will drool
>over the achievements of their kids who get a first in English and then turn
>around and say that such and such a poet is beyond consideration because he/she is
>an 'experimentalist' who is only able to function because they lecture in
>English at Cambridge, etc. I was brought up working class - having to listen to
>the prejudices of my own class is bad enough but when I have to hear those same
>prejudices filtered and inverted through the weird minds of middle class
>hypocrites I want to scream. And it happens, I hear it, again and again. It was a
>huge part of mainstream propaganda and attitude - backfiring on them now a
>little perhaps, which is what this Oxford conference thing is partly trying to
>address, maybe.
>
>You also said:
> >"this (move into the academie) betrays
>the avante garde as an outsider movement - moving into the
>institutions it was supposed to oppose"<
>
>You are making the mistake here of treating the avant garde all as one Yes,
>some strands of the avant garde history were very much to do with opposing
>such institutions as university departments and the awarding of certificates, but
>not all. There was right wing as well as left wing avant gardism. There was
>elitist avant gardism as well as radical avant gardism etc. But they get
>conflated - much of this is down to the art-world.
>
>And I don't share this romantic outsider thing either, though it is still
>attractive in some ways and still gets used by some avant publishers when trying
>to sell their wares. Look at the terriblework archive to see what I said about
>the way Nicholas Johnson tried to sell Foil. I don't like it and I've said so
>before - i remember when Geraldine and myself were the only people on the
>list to object to the nonsense being spouted about how cool Prynne was because he
>did not want his photo used on the back of his Bloodaxe book. I was not
>criticising Prynne, I was taking issue with the pathetic way his decision was being
>talked about. When I've been arguing with cris about these kinds of things in
>the past he, and somebody else, accused me of being the romantic, and yet
>look at the way some avant practitioners talk about themselves and you can see
>where the romantic notion lies. We all want to feel good about ourselves and
>what we do, it is natural, and we get these ideas about ourselves - I don't see
>how we can't - but to be hypocritical about it - to say one thing and do
>something else, that is what gets to me. OK, personally, i think that anyone engaged
>in institutional hierarchies should be very careful about the kinds of things
>they say about themselves and what they do - avant artists with huge
>contracts and reputations still talk about themselves as though they were rebels and
>that what they did was daring and on-the-edge - this is the modern world, baby
>- but let's deconstruct them, let's look up close at what they do and how it
>functions in the world. This is a huge bloody subject and I'm rambling too.
>
>Roger:
> >"the experimentalists... and the main-stream in academies
>mirror each other"<
>
>No they don't. Not in the way you mean. But this is a hard one. Mainstream
>poetry since the time of the Movement has not really needed academia as such, at
>least it hasn't needed it for its survival, or even for its development.
>There are literature experts in academia who have no connection whatsoever with
>any poetry written since 1945. I admit it, there are English lecturers who find
>Duffy very modern and difficult, who find Armitage awkward and far too
>colloquial etc. Some of these people know nothing about the rifts in modern poetry
>because they don't need to. The difference between Maggie O'Sullivan and Ruth
>Padel would mean nothing to them. However, a younger generation of academics
>have brought their more modern enthusiasms - for Duffy/ Armitage or whatever -
>into academic consideration, but this is actually quite a recent development I
>would say, starting in the 90's. They are still feeling their way. The
>situation of the isolated avant conclaves in academia is entirely different, but I'm
>going on too long.
>
>Tim A.


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