Good point Jamie. In fact much of PN Review (when I used to read it) consisted of fairly mainstream or accessible poetry (i.e. not too avantgarde). So it really shouldn’t be knocking other mainstream poetry.
By the way, the editor of the magazine, Michael Schmidt, ran Carcanet press at one time which published the debut poetry collection of a Sophie Hannah—a populist mainstream poet in the early 90s. She later went on to write novels. I read somewhere that Schmidt knew her father when they worked at the same university in Manchester. She was also a student in the English department that Schmidt taught at.
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Jamie McKendrick wrote:
Tim, I’m removing the sock for your ‘to conform to mainstream expectations’ remark, as it qualifies for my ‘nonsensical’ criteria for sock-removal. I’m sure you could find numerous writers who you’d place in that category that feel at least as passionately averse to the phenomenon as you do. Watts herself I’m sure you’d place there and it’s her who’s speaking out about it.
It may seem a small point but as I mentioned on the other parallel thread it’s not the T.S.Eliot prize but the Ted Hughes Prize which I believe was created to give a bit of profile to mixed media poetry. People are still entitled to question it whatever prize it wins.
Jamie
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