I wonder if he went there to be an outsider, Doug, it looks like a
self-fulfilling prophecy from what you say. I used to have problems with
some of the American modernists and LangPo (but not their European
equivalents) until I stopped thinking of them inside boxes, so say the other
day I went from re-reading Matthew Arnold & Browning to Bob Perelman and
Robert Grenier without any sense of dislocation. But someone like Les Murray
identifies very strongly with a disempowered class (as he would see it) of
small holders and Catholics against the smart ass power mongers of the
cities (and their university poets). I've always strongly identified with an
effectively disempowered class (the old urban trade unionised working class
that had vague memories of being Methodist) but I've come to realise we've
been abolished and as a member of the no more existing existent I find a
kind of liberation.
2009/6/23 Douglas Barbour <[log in to unmask]>
> About Murrary. Yes, he takes a stand for what you seem to be calling the
> 'rural' (in Oz), but is a highly sophisticated writer. Has both craft &
> technique, I guess we can say.
>
> At a conference here recently, he was a bit of an outsider, as it was in
> honour of George Oppen & the concept of numerousness, & so most of the poets
> there, Canadian & USAmerican, were in the New American & following mode; Les
> was something of an outsider, & seemed to take that as a way of attending.
> All the other poets attended his reading, he attended none of theirs.
>
> Reading to what was essentially a new audience, as he had never been to
> Edmonton before, & was welcomed by a large crowd of locals (many writers
> there), he chose to read mostly newer poems, not too many of what I think of
> as some of his finest work, from before 2000. SOme rather good, but I was
> wishing he would choose some of my faves.
>
> And he missed some terrific readings by such as Erin Mouré, Steve
> McCaffery, Rachel Blau Duplessis, & younger Canadians, Adam Dickinson & Andy
> Weaver.
>
> Doug
> On 22-Jun-09, at 10:54 PM, David Bircumshaw wrote:
>
> I think what Graves' was (unconsciously or not) restating is the old
>> distinction between country understanding and town intelligence. It's not
>> heard of so much in Britain these days as the cultural relationship
>> between
>> urbs and its farmlands has altered so much: in Hardy's youth there still
>> was
>> a distinctive rural peasantry and an oral tradition of ballad singing, not
>> something you're likely to find in the dormitory villages of today.
>> You will still see something of a distinctive rural ( and troubled by city
>> slickers) in poets from some countries - Les Murray springs to mind, I
>> don't
>> mean to say Murray is a Bumpkin, he's a very sophisticated man, but
>> there's
>> a real distinction between him and, say, a Charles Bernstein.
>>
>
> 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
>
> The abandoned world offers its wild particulars,
> leaves in the air, a single leaf on water.
> ............
> The rain falls like rain.
>
> David Helwig
>
--
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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