Dear Matt, don't give up on it! sometimes folks are quiet, then everyone
talks at once...
Children of Albion... it's very fashionable to sneer at the overblown
elements of that collection, particularly the editorial. Beware of
triumphalist editorials! but it's significant how many of the people have
lasted, gone on to other things. You're right to see Conductors as another
step on that route, indeed some of the folks are the same. I'd say that in
general anthologies don't do what their editors or publicists claim for
them, but in one way or another they are landmarks. COA caught, and
perhaps got stuck in, its age in a way that the obvious "sequel" -
"Grandchildren of Albion" - didn't, I feel. More specifically, for me, it
pointed towards people who weren't writing like A.Alvarez The New Poetry
(beware of New! as a marketing term...), gave me some ways to follow up.
The New British Poetry (that word again) (Paladin 1988) obviously tried to
do the same kind of thing, and I still meet people for whom that was a
formative thing, an "introduction" in fact. Good.
I like the mapping reference you give, which always seems apt to me. In
the end, particular anthologies / magazines / presses / groupings offer no
more than a generalised map, and someone elses to boot. You go on from
there and start your own chart.
Actually I think the list went quiet (a) cos it's the end of term and (b)
cos we all got in a knot over the posting of poems with the result that
no-one posted anything. So here's the closing stanza of Lee Harwood's
_Talking Bab-Ilu_ (for Anne Stevenson) from Shearsman 30:
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Listening, waiting, drifting
into that space beyond words.
Forgot what I meant to say.
My hands before my eyes.
It can happen. Clear and bright.
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Happy Easter, listers!
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Richard Caddel
Durham University Library, Stockton Rd., Durham DH1 3LY, UK
E-mail: R.I.Caddel @ durham.ac.uk
Phone: +44 (0)191 374 3044 Fax: +44 (0)191 374 7481
WWW: http://www.dur.ac.uk/~dul0ric
"Words! Pens are too light. Take a chisel to write."
- Basil Bunting
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