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BRITISH-IRISH-POETS  October 2011

BRITISH-IRISH-POETS October 2011

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Subject:

Re: Forward for RFL

From:

Mark Weiss <[log in to unmask]>

Reply-To:

British & Irish poets <[log in to unmask]>

Date:

Mon, 10 Oct 2011 15:49:25 -0400

Content-Type:

text/plain

Parts/Attachments:

Parts/Attachments

text/plain (115 lines)

I'd be greatly surprised if the numbers fell out as you suspect--they certainly wouldn't in the US--the numbvers on the borders would be far sparser. At the copre, I think, is a different set of ambitions for what we call "poem."

Best,

Mark

-----Original Message-----
>From: Jamie McKendrick <[log in to unmask]>
>Sent: Oct 10, 2011 2:58 PM
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: Re: Forward for RFL
>
>By finding the question one of the least interesting ones to ask of a poem, 
>it might look as if I was trying impatiently to close off the issue, but not 
>really: I was exagerating. If it had been without any interest I wouldn't 
>have responded. I still think your remarks, even in this fuller context, 
>suggest a sureness about what underlies a 'mainstream' aesthetic which I 
>sincerely don't share. It seems like a convenient fictive construct, to 
>which shifting borders can then be added at convenience. In writing about 
>"what it will just accept, or won't quite accept" that "it" has to do a lot 
>of work. We're talking about a lot of writers here, not just a panel of five 
>or so judges for such and such a prize.
>  I would love to construct an experiment in which, say, fifteen sample 
>texts were chosen (by myself, with only a little deliberate guile) and 
>someone with such a clear set of internal guidelines would then have to 
>divide the sheep from the goats. At either end there would be three or four 
>which would give no difficulty, but the whole of the middle nine or ten 
>could be deeply problematic. Then we might start asking more interesting 
>questions of the poems, and not only evaluative ones...
>(And thanks also for Giles Goodland's poem.)
>
>
>----- Original Message ----- 
>From: "[log in to unmask]" <[log in to unmask]>
>To: <[log in to unmask]>
>Sent: Monday, October 10, 2011 3:31 PM
>Subject: Re: Forward for RFL
>
>
>I'll go on interesting myself, anyhow, and indeed I'm even extending my new 
>career of damnation, moving on from Langley's lovely and intricate poem to 
>Giles Goodland's poem "The Bees", which won the 2010 Cardiff International 
>Poetry Competition. (http://www.literaturewales.org/home/i/136826/)
>
>
>The Bees
>
>We sleep in our pinholed shells, then
>are speed or seed cameras,
>pursuing a faint ascent over
>the programmed grass where
>are those age-old golds
>the mountains whethering
>and music fragmenting ahead
>
>the songs in us sweep down loud
>canyons and stack in flower-
>heads of willow-herb leaning
>hard on the untwined song
>chief among us is one who dances
>a name around corners,
>
>run of the million the plant-planets
>explode language, each one a new
>
>understanding of the rain to
>make a rope and make a fist,
>
>we tangle into thirstless thistles,
>its mud-bronze weaponry
>flow coldswarms, warmscolds
>
>each of us a furlined pilot in helicopters
>the naked eye makes invisible
>
>on the flower's ironwork landing-platform
>we extend our feeding nozzles and get
>a free paint job thrown in
>then knock down the sky, one word at a time.
>
>
>If it comes to evaluation, I think that's a lovely poem too, and I hope 
>people will believe I have some enthusiasm for Goodland's writing - if you 
>don't, read this:
>
>http://www.intercapillaryspace.org/2011/06/shearsman-samplers.html
>
>So, why don't I do as John says, and simply welcome the fact of a poem 
>having wide appeal across different audiences? I admit my reactions are more 
>complicated than that. Why the undeniably wry smile, the 
>verging-on-freudenschade?
>
>I suppose in a way it's disappointed idealism: to find that a poet I have 
>long considered transformative has been recognized by some larger audience, 
>and to suppose for a moment that the conditions of Britain themselves have 
>changed, that a transformation has occurred in the audience itself, that the 
>mainstream is no longer where I thought it was... and then to find, reading 
>the poem, that after all nothing much has changed, that the reasons why it 
>won a prize are readily apparent and do not imply any such radical change of 
>general taste as I had momentarily fantasised. That "The Bees", in short, is 
>not “Self eludes me like a word...”
>
>And yet there is IS a strong and interesting connection. (Oh yes, 
>"interesting".) It certainly focussed for me something about Goodland's 
>other writing, it gave me an insight, to discover that he could also write 
>"The Bees".  That's one thing. And the second is that the nature of the 
>mainstream - constantly changing, though of course not in quite the 
>transformative way I imagined, is relevant to anyone who tries to think 
>outside it. You can make it out best by its borders, so anything that tells 
>me about what it will just accept, or won't quite accept, is of interest to 
>me.
>
>I want to say a line or two more about Langley later, when I'm back near my 
>shelves. 

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