It is very easy to give a simple explanation for what may be a complex
position / decision.
Maybe that is why people say _oh they're navel gazers_.Another anecdote
from someone angling
for a reading -

Him - I couldn't get to any of the last season's readings. I didn't know
they
were on. If only it was in time out.

Me - They were all in time out

Him - But I don't like the pub

Maybe people dont want to commit themselves to a position; and this list
does encourage that. Maybe they dont want to debate for fear they might
have to admit they are wrong.

May I also point to a number of misreadings, as I see them, in what Rupert
Loydell sd

_when writers speak out *against* publicity! _

I don't think anyone did - only misrepresenting publicity

_the authors who want readings, but cannot be bothered to project their
voice,
speak up, or even acknowledge, let alone talk to, an audience_

don't remember anything about that here

_The days of any underground network has gone_

no one mentioned the underground - it doesn't come out this far anyway,
just the train and the bus

_to rely on the likes of the British Poets List and their kind hardly pays
the print
bill or the venue hire and writers' fees!_

too right, but no one thinks otherwise

_To object to NJ wanting an audience for Tom Raworth is ridiculous!_

Indeed, but no one did

_Like Andy Brown, I'm constantly amazed by the tone and content of this
group. I don't know whether to laugh, go down the pub or hire a poetry
assassin. _

But what, Rupert, is it that amazes you. As none of the things you have
listed has been sd, you do not tell us.

Let's face it, at the end of the day, it is the 90s and we have to be ready
for the millenium - I am all for publicity. I send press releases for every
reading I organise to every national, all the radio, all the local papers.
They ignore them, but I am for publicity and I shall wear them down - just
remember the ant and the rubber tree plant (that's a reference for Robert
Sheppard). I take leaflets round London. I get posters displayed. I do
specific mail shots. Every organiser I know of does that.

What we have to beware of, all of us, is the all or nothing approach. The
all, in publicity terms, will destroy us. What *I* have seen here is an
inquiry into whether or not there is a halfway house. I think there is.

Good joke, Nick. I only know Diana, Princess of Wales jokes, and they are
all,
definitely, unseemly

L



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