Tim,
  It's not at all high profile - it's profile could hardly be lower. And 
maybe you're thinking of the Penguin European Poets Series which I also grew 
up with - I seem to remember Neruda and Vallejo somehow got into that as 
well. That was Alvarez's initiative, and obviously Penguin's, and I can only 
hope we see something like it again.
 That's one question - publishing. Another's media coverage. When, say, a 
British poet, not even necessarily well-known, is translated into Italian 
there's a fair chance of picking up a few reviews in newspapers and 
magazines. (This may be a slightly rose-tinted view that comes from sporadic 
acquaintance). The reverse, though, is a pretty rare event over here. The 
papers could do something more about it - that's down to Book's editors. The 
last couple of weeks I've been away so missed the Guardian but where I was 
the cultural coverage in La Vanguardia isn't bad and El Pais's last Babelia 
has a round-up of 7 recent books of poems (from the 'classic' to the 
'avant-garde')...
    But it's not all bleak. The magazines - Poetry Wales, for instance, has 
just taken on the excellent Elzbieta Wójcik-Leese as an assistant editor, 
and that's given a higher profile to Polish poetry. Poetry Review - which 
you clearly dislike - has issued a supplement of Lithuanian poets and has 
published a fair number of foreign poets of late. I don't know The Warwick 
Review that well, but have just reviewed an Alda Merini translation and a 
Quasimodo for them. (One of them, at least, still alive.)
   Where we may differ is on the thorny topic of what you earlier called 
"the literary establishment". I see it as occupying a more fragmented and 
sometimes atomized and random space (publishers; reviewers; poets and so 
on - with some overlap) where it seems to me you perceive it as hegemonic, 
compact and like a kind of invisible ideology. Both views seem possible. Let 
me explain a bit better: I wouldn't deny there exists something like a 
Zeitgeist - often shaped by people who have influence and power within the 
literary world. What can't be denied is that the media is far more likely to 
respond enthusiastically to something accessible, perhaps in an accomodation 
with a supposed public taste. I think that generally  Books' editors in the 
past were far more willing to take risks with what they sent to be reviewed. 
Nevertheless some things do slip through the net. No-one would argue that 
Geoffrey Hill was an accessible poet but he seems to be awarded a fair 
degree of attention.  The best we can do individually is write as well as we 
can, and speak up - wherever that's possible - for the poetry we are 
passionate about. I'm also happy to see any protests about the cultural 
homogenization of poetry but I'd like them to be clear and focussed - not 
swingeing generalizations.
      Best wishes,
Jamie

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Tim Allen" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Wednesday, August 26, 2009 6:09 PM
Subject: Re: "Has British Poetry had any significance since Wordsworth?"


> Jamie, I appreciate the tone of your response and I take on board what 
> you say about that translation activity. All I would say on that  though 
> is that it is not high profile is it? It is not really  accessible to a 
> general poetry browser in the same way that such stuff  was when I was 
> young and could pick up this stuff all over the shop,  so to speak. 
> Available translations of the European modernists had, in  my opinion, as 
> much influence, if not more, on the Brit avant garde of  the late 60's, 
> than imports from Black Mountain and San Francisco. And  ok, I'll try not 
> to confuse you with some whole other person. Such a  whole other person 
> might have had his bearded mug splashed across two  pages of the Weekend 
> Guardian a few weeks ago.
>
> Cheers
>
> Tim A.
>
> On 26 Aug 2009, at 16:36, Jamie McKendrick wrote:
>
>> If I've understood you, you're right Wordsworth has never been a  problem 
>> for me, and in this respect I welcome and endorse the  clarity of Peter 
>> Riley's post which I've just read. I think it helps  not to turn poets 
>> into weapons.
>>  But perhaps you mean I've been 'lucky' to avoid a proper  investigation 
>> of my own writing practices by my affiliation with the  opposed camp?
>> I see that the implied question behind both your mails - why is one 
>> practice given practically all of the oxygen of media publicity and  the 
>> other so little - has not really been broached. But what I've  written 
>> may at least help you not to confuse me "with some whole  other person" 
>> as Gene Hackman once put it.
>>
>> Jamie
>
> etc
>