That's of course way too easy. Jeremy Prynne gets lots of goodies, but nobody thinks he's mainstream (a better term than establishment). There really is an aesthetic boundary, fuzzy as it is, as all boundaries are, and one side holds most of the power.
-----Original Message-----
>From: David Lace <[log in to unmask]>
>Sent: Jan 12, 2012 10:08 AM
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: Chris Hamilton Emery on the elusive nature of a “poetry establishment”
>
>From the Poets on Fire forum:
>
>"People write about this bulletin board that it contains the establishment. The term is a moveable feast, isn't it? Anyone managing to earn or grab some resources is immediately considered part of the establishment, 'specially if we haven't got a slice. It's mainly blokes who get worked up about this. I can be sat with the avant-garde hearing the term used about the Poetry Society, or hear it used in the Poetry Society about DCMS or ACE. Or hear someone say that the establishment is a cluster of poetry editors, but the cluster changes depending on who's talking. Some feel it's the Festival Directors. The journalists. The odd millionaire. Don. Simon. Sean. Fiona. George. Everyone has a theory, different people populate it. No one I've sat with has ever said, "Ah, yes. That's me. I'll be that, the Establishment. How do you do" It's always someone else. Somewhere else. With another in control of it. And we're outside of it, the bastards. It's one of the tiny pleasures of our industry to speculate on mafia-shagging, fixing and power. If there is an establishment, I can tell you one thing for sure, they're pretty shit at running things for us.
>
>However, the real establishment (as we all know) is readership. Anyone working outside of that is pretty much excluded from things. That's about 99% of us to some degree at some point, and eventually forever. All is vanity ... meanwhile publish me, you swine!"
>
>
>http://z11.invisionfree.com/Poets_On_Fire/index.php?act=ST&f=15&t=1455&view=getnewpost
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