Dear Jamie -


Thanks for this. I hadn't picked up on it. As you say, 'not unadventurous'. Will it satisfy Cathy Park Hong?

Yes, Wiki is right: David is Guyana's Ambassador to China!

Yours,


Robert

-----Original Message-----
From: British & Irish poets [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Jamie McKendrick
Sent: 26 August 2015 17:27
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: "Delusions of Whiteness in the Avant-Garde" by Cathy Park Hong

Hi Robert,
  I'm not sure these categories would be of much use here (or be of much use with any poets of any significance for that matter). The last book of D'Aguiar's  I read was Bill of Rights (1998) - a long narrative poem about the mass suicide at Jonestown, Guyana. (omeone I was at school with died there so I read it with particular interest but irrespective of that it generates its own compelling interest. It begins:

   From Chattanooga, from Brixton (L-, write),
   From hallowed be Thy name, Thy kingdom come,
   To the Potaro, Essequibo, Demerara,

   From 132 gradations - blue-black to chalk-white,
   To watch-that-sun-and-overproof-rum,
   The sweet potato, bow and arrow warrior,

   The near one thousand came and stayed.

And takes us to its ghastly denouement with 'N-d-isopropyl-glucuronate'. 
(The second stanza is in italics). Not exactly the matter of poignant domestic incident, if that's supposed to be a helpful marker, nor stylistically, to my ear, particularly unadventurous...

Speaking of Guyana, and as you mentioned him, I don't think David Dabydeen has published much poetry since his Turner in 1994(?), but he's now, according to Wiki,  Guyana's ambassador to China.

Jamie

-----Original Message-----
From: Hampson, R
Sent: Wednesday, August 26, 2015 2:23 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: "Delusions of Whiteness in the Avant-Garde" by Cathy Park Hong

Hi -

If it is true that Fred had written different kinds of poetry at the start of his career, but never revisited the more 'avant-garde' style, it might have some bearing on the discussion of the absence of black writers in the 'avant garde'.

I certainly met Fred at what might be regarded as an 'avant-garde' reading.

I suppose the 'commercial pressure' could have come from the success of the Mama Dot volume, but I don't know enough about Fred's subsequent publishing/writing career to pursue this.

Robert

-----Original Message-----
From: British & Irish poets [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Jamie McKendrick
Sent: 26 August 2015 13:51
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: "Delusions of Whiteness in the Avant-Garde" by Cathy Park Hong

Hi Robert,
I saw your 'alleged' wasn't meant to question D'Aguiar's integrity, but given how pervasive those kinds of attacks have become, it's worth signalling that the decisions about the contents of a book of poems are overwhelmingly likely to be aesthetic. I can't even imagine how a commercial pressure would be brought to bear in the context of poetry.
  Something I can imagine, though, is that the relationship between poet and editor could be quite a delicate one - particularly with a first book. For all it may be unrepresentative, I didn't adopt any of the four or so changes suggested for my own first book, but did accept one or two for the 2nd from the same editor. Not, I'd like to think, because I'd caved in to institutional pressure, but because I saw that in that instance she was right...
Jamie


> On 25 Aug 2015, at 21:17, Hampson, R <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> Hi, Jamie -
>
> Fair enough. This is a memory of a conversation some forty years ago, 
> and I can't remember my co-conversationalist. My 'alleged' was to try 
> and cover this reliance on hearsay.
>
> I am not suggesting that 'Mama Dot' isn't a coherent collection. If 
> there were Olsonian poems (say) that were left out, this omission 
> would probably have added to the coherence of the volume.
>
> I am not trying to score points against Fred or his publisher, but 
> trying to suggest that the absence of a significant black presence in 
> the 'avant garde' might involve other factors than exclusion by the 'avant garde'.
>
> Fred did write a chapter on black poetry for the 'new british poetries' 
> book I edited with Peter Barry in the 1990s.
>
> David Dabydeen is also interesting: I enjoyed 'Coolie Odyssey' (1988), 
> but my sense is that he turned to novels after that. Perhaps, I 
> haven't been sufficiently attentive.
>
>
> Robert