Some time back Ira was asking about the politics of the London scenes
and prompted some discussion / reminiscences attempting to characterise
'London poetry'. 
My own initiation into what became 'London poetry'  began as an
undergraduate at King's London, in the late 60s: hearing Cobbing
perform; coming across Lee Harwood's work from Fulcrum - and Paul
Matthews / Paul Evans  (and their magazine) ; becoming aware of Better
Books in Charing X Rd as a resource. Over the same period, there were
the big anti-Vietnam War demonstrations in London (and many other large
demonstrations); the events in France and Germany  - occupations at LSE
and elsewhere - with much talk of student / worker alliances, Students
for a Democratic Society etc; IMG and IS were high profile; non-CPGB
Marxism, anarchism, Situationism were 'in the air' ...
'London poetry' for me began in the early 70s. Working with Ken Edwards
and Peter Barry on what became ALEMBIC; associating with Mike Dobbie and
Ulli Freer - including at least one poetry reading series at the White
Swan (Zero Events), where SubVoicive was later to start up; various
readings and events organised at the Enterprise in Chalk Farm by Bernard
Kelly; Paul Brown's activities as poet, translator and publisher; Paul
Buck's work as poet, performer, publisher ; associating also with David
Miller and Phillip Jenkins and having a sense of other writers living
and working around Notting Hill. Through Dobbie and Freer, there was a
sense of a 'tradition' of experimental work in London coming out of the
60s work of Cobbing and Nuttall with an emphasis on sound, the visual,
performance, chance, Burroughs and cut-ups. Otherwise the point of
reference was dada and surrealism.  Compendium was the major resource -
opening onto a world of  small presses and little magazines. Peter
Finch's SECOND AEON and Peter Hodgkiss's POETRY INFORMATION, with its
extensive annotated listings / short reviews of magazines and small
press publications was the main guide. Allen Fisher's work as poet,
publisher, performer was a major influence.

>From 71 onwards, there were also various activities around the Poetry
Society; the big London conferences organised by Eric Mottram,
facilitating various networks, making visible a range of practices.
Insofar as there was 'london poetry'  it  was through the convergence of
various networks on London venues, but with an openness to a range of
poetries and practices rather than a particular programme. 

Robert hampson

> ----------
> From: 	[log in to unmask][SMTP:[log in to unmask]]
> Reply To: 	Ira Lightman
> Sent: 	01 December 1997 21:18
> To: 	Hampson R
> Cc: 	[log in to unmask]
> Subject: 	Re: All and sundries
> 
> 
> 
> >      I'd characterise the London 'scenes' as a broadly 
> cheerful, informally constituted, beer-sipping 
> anarcho-syndicalist tendency with scattered
> residual Marxist undertones. A disaffected avant-garde trace 
> element, neither leading with sense of direction nor sharing 
> any articulated sense of who and what it might be 'in the 
> front' of. ....Residues of liberal hippy idealisms blurring 
> into punk and Goth. Singular 'outsider' or 'indifferenter' 
> projections. Verging on arch romantic at times.
> 
> Cris, or anyone, what were the plans of these politics?
> I can see the disaffection and so on connecting with punk
> but what part of punk was political other than its
> anti-fascist rallies. I pick up a lot of skepticism,
> or perhaps bracing anti-nostalgia, in these considered
> words. But are you suggesting an intellectual wing of
> punk, or an intellectual/anti-bourgeois movement
> vitalised by the punk movement (which has about its
> primal, majority feel more of adolescent rebellion,
> a great no saying with very little yes saying, as
> if any yes saying was too intellectual/bourgeois-
> are they the same thing). Did these scenes have any
> plans, "Blairite" long-term strategy ho ho, for
> long-term change; were its pieties by nature dogmatic,
> not about to cut their cloth (Margaret Thatcher always
> seemed a  major punk to me, impossible before punk etc)?
> 
> Ira
> 
> 
> 
> 


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