Some of them certainly got here, & yes they did have some impact, but
in Canada then we were deeply immersed in our own youthful poetic
surge, & also the New American Poetry, which seemed more pertinent to
what a lot of us were trying for (out of Pound-Williams, & then).
Canada, in terms of publishing, was nicely balanced between the US &
UK, & the same was true for poetry, so that a number of poets
(seemingly more often in the east) paid attention to the UK poets
while many in the west (& around Coach House, especially, in Toronto)
found inspiration in those new american poets in the US (many of whom
came to the Vancouver conference in 63 [which I missed, being in
Halifax a the time]).
Doug
On 31-Aug-10, at 3:13 AM, Tim Allen wrote:
> Yes, those were the days - another huge impact on my young brain at
> the time. I remember that Wantling Jackson Nuttall volume too and
> always wondered what happened to Wantling and Jackson. I was
> fascinated by D.M. Black's poetry - must go back to have a look.
>
> The overall feeling of the Penguin series at the time was
> inclusivity openness and adventure - part of a wider scene of course
> - it didn't take long for things to close up again.
>
> Tim A.
>
> On 31 Aug 2010, at 00:08, Robin Hamilton wrote:
>
>> Subject: Re: Found Wantling
>>
>>> Back in the Sixties, Wantling's prison and Vietnam (or Korea?)
>>> based work got the usa small press attention of folks/readers
>>> (primarily male) who were responsive to poems from the 'real
>>> world' at the margines - scarred, radiating a 'blue' sense of down
>>> & out loss and anger combined with a hard edge lyricism. Cold war
>>> stuff - a parallel would be work by Bukowski, and Etheridge
>>> Knight. I don't really know Nuttal's work, but he was big in in
>>> England against the Bomb, a live wire, counter-cultural resistance
>>> to upper stratta English culture. (This is probably all on
>>> Wikipedia).
>>>
>>> Stephen V
>>> http://stephenvincent.net/blog/
>>
>> The third of them in that particular volume, Alan Jackson, was of
>> course Scottish (though he had the misfortune to hail from
>> Edinburgh rather than Glasgow) and so is naturally enough the one
>> which the Birk ignores.
>>
>> The entire first series of Penguin Modern Poets was more than
>> interesting, and I think the initiative of one particular person
>> who worked at Penguin at the time. It got reincarnated in a later
>> series which was more USAmerican oriented (and incidentally if I
>> remember correctly included inter alia Bukowski), but that never
>> had quite the same impact.
>>
>> More than a few under-recognised writers -- D.M.Black is the most
>> notable -- *almost* achieved fame by being published in it, but
>> not quite.
>>
>> They did neat linking in the volumes too, each of which featured
>> three poets, which suggested that whoever was responsible had more
>> than a few braincells to rub together. The Liverpool Poets (as it
>> was later renamed) with Adrian Henri, Roger McGough and Brian
>> Patten might seem obvious now, but Penguin got there early. They
>> also neatly brought together McCaig, Mackay Brown, and Ian Crichton
>> Smith. (Edwin Morgan significantly featured in another volume!)
>>
>> I have to agree with dave, those were the days, my friend.
>>
>> I've got most of that original series still, having bought them as
>> they first appeared.
>>
>> Robin
>
Douglas Barbour
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