"Eric Mottram was a terrible reader & writer" is one I'd like to venture
here... All power to the Eric acolytes, of course, but I'd like someone
to tell me why (how?) he's a great poet, for example. (The fact that he
was a very nice man & very important promoter of poets being here
irrelevant).>>
said Tim Atkins
he sd a lot of things but i have cut this bit out as itis quite enough to
deal with
well... _terrible_ on one side and _great_ on the other
These are not mutually exclusive
Rather than defend I would like to add a voice - to a degree - to the
sacrilege / blasphemy
I have been fairly heavily attacked for NOT believing Eric to be _a great
poet_ and told it is a problem that I should wish to work on promoting his
literary remains if I do not believe that Eric was _great_...
The who doesnt matter - it is the absolute that bothers me and I wish to
air. I was asked in the conversation I am particularly talking about -
although _conversation_ credits it with more courtesy than it actually
had... I was asked _what have you done to promote eric's work?_ which
enabled me to say _devote five issues out of 26 to his work in RWC; what
have you done? with - I wld like to think - some suavity
I do NOT believe Eric Mottram to have been a great poet. He is a poet I
value, a poet I am still learning from, a poet I wish to publish - he died
the day before I published Masks and the day he was due to read at SVP,
leaving me to conduct a kind of performance wake. My opinion in this regard
is unconnected with my judgment of him a person or as an agitator
I do not *really accept the concept of great poet and when once I put that
to Eric he agreed and said it was part of the tyrannies against us to
classify poets that way
_nice_ is not a word I wld use of him wch is not to say that he wasnt often
extremely nice - astonishing worrying restless maybe
L
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