Peter Reading, now there's a one ...
I find his sequences better read fast right through, the texture can seem
not quite it when looked at closely. I like the way he imitates the effect
of classical elegiacs in English: apparently he conned the Princeton Poetics
book as a guide. His mimicry is very good, though archly literary in a way.
Someone called a modern fragmentary Smollett. A man of low degree, all
those years on the shop-floor (he worked in one of those things called a
factory, that's for anyone too young to remember them) yet has friends in
high places, like the TLS. He uses 'avant-garde' techniques like collage so
the avant-garde loathe him. He writes poor prose but fine prose poetry. He
is sponsored by a shadowy American foundation.
He has one of the most unmistakeable styles in current british poetry which
prompted the late Martin Seymour-Smith to claim that he had 'failed to find
his voice'
Ah my England.
2009/5/31 Martin Walker <[log in to unmask]>
> Yes, thanks for the link, Dave, I didn't know this periodical. I usually
> find what John Mathias has to say about modern poetry interesting. In
> general, I tend not to resonate with O'Brien's approach, or the poets he
> seems to prefer. But, a big but, this is not a determinative of my
> enjoyment
> of actual poems, which I always try to read without preconceptions.
> I never possessed *Conductors* but looked at it - then, when I wanted to
> buy
> it it was gone, gone and never called me mother. I find Iain Sinclair is a
> gas, even though I have trouble getting through a whole book of his prose.
> But I never read all the way through *The Anatomy of Melancholy* either.
> Anyone for Peter Reading? I've got a lot of pleasure out of his work, even
> though I don't reread it (perhaps I should).
> mj
> Du siehst mein Sohn, zum Raum wird hier die Zeit. - Gurnemanz
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Douglas Barbour
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Sent: Sunday, May 31, 2009 8:17 PM
> Subject: Re: Conductors of Chaos
>
>
> Yes it is. I have read Tuma's book & agree with Matthias that it's an
> excellent introduction to recent British poetry outside the usual
> mainstream.
>
> Doug
> On 30-May-09, at 10:58 AM, David Bircumshaw wrote:
>
> > http://www.altx.com/EBR/ebr10/10mat.htm
> > of interest.
>
> Douglas Barbour
> [log in to unmask]
>
> http://www.ualberta.ca/~dbarbour/
>
> Latest books:
> Continuations (with Sheila E Murphy)
> http://www.uap.ualberta.ca/UAP.asp?LID=41&bookID=664
> Wednesdays'
>
> http://abovegroundpress.blogspot.com/2008/03/new-from-aboveground-press_10.html
>
> Swept snow, Li Po,
> by dawn’s 40-watt moon
> to the road that hies to office
> away from home.
>
> Lorine Niedecker
>
--
David Bircumshaw
"Nothing can be done in the face
of ordinary unhappiness" - PP
Website and A Chide's Alphabet
http://www.staplednapkin.org.uk
The Animal Subsides http://www.arrowheadpress.co.uk/books/animal.html
Leicester Poetry Society: http://www.poetryleicester.co.uk
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