19.xii.97
Hello, you all out there. I've been tracking this discussion group for three or four months now, with great interest.
I'm trying to put togther an exhibition on the poetry of the 70's for The Poetry Library, and want to ask for help with one or two things. Firstly, am I right in thinking that the most important event of that decade was the unseating of Eric Mottram, Lee Harwood etc from the Poetry Society? What are people's views on this? I know what Eric Motttram thought from his essay in New British Poetries and I know Andrew Duncan has expressed his view in Angel Exhaust. Have the events of the mid-70's left us the present status quo, with the so-called avantgarde "on the outside", rendered invisible? Is this actually a state to enjoy with greater freedom, to work in ways and forms prefered by poets, the "golden age" of the Underground? Were there other more subtle pressures operating that meant the PS would inevitably fall into the hands of a now seeming mainstream.
What I want to get at is the truth, what really happened to innovative poetries in the 70's? Was the parting of the ways with the "mainstream" inevitable, necessary even. As I read the history there was some kind of uneasy coexistence in the early 70's, maybe a consensus even?
Any views that people might want to share with me on this, so I get the exhibition right, will be used in consultation; obviously if I'm going to quote you on anything you'll see the text and the context for your approval -- some of you were there, I was not.
This list is the place to discuss this kind of issue: Fiona Templeton and cris cheek touched on it a couple of weeks ago, but if you want to contact me direct please do. The exhibition will run through April 1998, so if you want to email/phone me I'll need any info you can offer between now and the end of January.
Have a cool yule,
Simon Smith
The Poetry Library
Tel: 0171 921 0664
email: [log in to unmask]
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
|