Hi Jeffrey,
We do seem to be on parallel tracks re a lot of these things. I used
to hammer on about the workshop influence too. I used to call it the
Workshop School and I wrote in Terrible Work back in the 90's that the
Workshop School had had the biggest and most lasting influence on
poetry in Britain, far outstripping the Martian thing that arose at
the same time, in the 80's. It was the values of the workshop school,
basically a form of bastardised bourgeois personalism grafted onto
post-Movement poetics, that lead directly to the explosion of Domestic
Realism in the 90's. In Glastonbury in 1995 I held an anti-workshop
workshop called Terrible Workshop - 4 people turned up, my mates and
Sean Bonney, so we forgot about the silly thing and just had a good
time chatting.
Tim A.
On 9 Aug 2009, at 14:18, Jeffrey Side wrote:
> Workshops are a strange phenomenon in poetry composition. One wonders
> how Blake ever managed without them! They function mainly as a
> networking
> tool for poets who like to appear busy, or who are insecure about
> thier
> practice. Of course, they should exist, but only in the same way as
> pottery
> classes do. Both can be pleasurable for a few hours. Sorry to sound so
> cynical.
>
>
>
>
> On Sun, 9 Aug 2009 12:58:01 +0100, David Bircumshaw
> <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
>> Thanks for this, Jeffrey, the observations on workshops made me
>> smile.
>>
>> 2009/7/31 Jeffrey Side <[log in to unmask]>
>>
>>> Found a good article called 'POETRY SCENE: CURRENT DIFFICULTIES'
>>>
>>> http://www.textetc.com/modernist/current-difficulties.html
>>>
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> David Bircumshaw
>> "A window./Big enough to hold screams/
>> You say are poems" - DMeltzer
>> 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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