Alison - a few things re below...

For starters people (in UK) don't get have 'a bit' of defensive  
Anglocentrism (particularly with regards to the French), they have  
huge dollops of it. Yes, they get very worked up. All kinds of reasons  
for that of course. What matters is that this is not a minor point,  
the differences between French and English poetry are fundamental, and  
fundamental too in understanding the mainstream's attitude towards  
certain aspects of the UK's alternative poetries.

Oh dear, I mentioned the 'goblin'. I know what you are saying there  
and I don't like it, frankly - perhaps you are implying that a thing  
called the goblin is old hat now and that there is nothing really  
scary about it any more etc etc, that we've all moved on. No, it  
hasn't moved on - on the ground the same conditions apply. It's not a  
matter of being angry on my part either (that fell off quite a while  
ago) but a matter of trying to understand . You make the same dig  
against an 'anger' at the 'theory led establishment', as though anyone  
who feels that is just being silly - I get a slight whiff of   
patronization there, hope I'm wrong. As I said, I don't agree with  
what Adam Fieled says but I can see why he says it.

Of course I agree with what you say below about the leapfrogging of  
practice and theory and about there not being anything fundamentally  
hostile about theory to creative thinking, however, my point is that  
theory becomes 'sclerotic' (I think that's how it's spelt) far more  
often than some people think, particularly in some institutional  
circumstances. I am open to challenge on that point, I know - a very  
real area of debate beckons there.

All the best

Tim A.

On 2 Sep 2010, at 00:02, Alison Croggon wrote:

> I don't know why people get so worked up about "The French", either. A
> bit of defensive Anglocentrism? For my part, I've always found
> practice and theory have a leapfrog relationship. Bit like building
> castles in the air - you need scaffolding before you jump off to the
> next cloud, where you build the next scaffolding of theory... There's
> nothing fundamentally hostile about theory to creative thinking - the
> reverse, rather - unless it become schlerotic and forbids the jumping,
> or weighs it down so much that jumping is not possible. Mental image
> here something like Mandelstam's evolving in-flight aeroplane.
>
> Looking at this argument, with its anger at goblins like the
> mainstream and the theory-led establishment &c, I realise I am more
> and more alienated from both ends. What the hell can they possibly
> mean?