>- ah, we're rather at cross-purposes here, Trevor: I was referring to our
>earlier backchannel correspondence where you'd said that our Other Irish
>coverage - Coffey, Healy, Mills, Scully and Walsh - represented "the
>continuity of one specific element of the Irish poetry scene", i.e., as
>you put it, "the Coffey succession". I said then words to the effect of:
>Whilst each of these poets (and others) would admit to admiring Coffey in
>their various ways, I didn't/don't see how you can reduce such a diverse
>bunch (to my ears and eyes) to a single line without great textual
>violence. Your justification for putting Healy, for instance, into this
>artificial group, was that he and Coffey had some scientific background -
>that seems a thin justification, to me. That's what needs more textual,
>rather than extra-textual, support - in my opinion. Otherwise, I feel that
>what could appear as reductiveness on your part will play right into the
>hands of Longley et al., creating groups where you might be recognising
>range.

Ric, I find it odd that you respond by exhuming our backchannel discussion rather than by addressing my points made here. Still, since it might be of interest to anyone who's not already echoing my "Ugh!", I've attached below the mail you quote from, to provide a little (sic!) context.

Some highlights here for anyone who wants to skip the main feature:

- "What I have been trying to say is that you've selected from only one limited area of the spectrum." . . .

- "Let me be very explicit here: I am not suggesting that this marks in any way a deficiency in the work of these poets, merely that their work to date articulates (with considerable variety) the continuity of one specific element of the Irish poetry 'scene', an element which had already found itself in symbiosis (and creatively so, I believe), with the English 'other'."

My suggesting a "Coffey succession" was an unscientific and ad hoc attempt to identify the plane of cleavage along which your selection runs: partly publishing history (the houses issuing the poets you include - Coffey excepted, different generation - and those publishing the other poets I name are mutually exclusive sets, the one having extensive British distribution, the other not), partly practice.

Textual support for Coffey's impact on specific practices is one point I will cede you, for the moment. I don't have texts by me at work now, nor did I then; I do intend to get something down later this year by way of appreciation of the poets you include, and others, given but world enough and time. Maybe then . . .

Let me stress, though, that I don't regard a 'succession' to Brian Coffey as in any way limiting for any poet - he was for me a friend, and an example - the limitation I see is in your selection. To put it bluntly, I think your choice might have been more informed had you contacted a variety of the academics and publishers with a track record in the 'other' Irish poetry. Without wanting to relapse into inquisitorial mode, I wonder whether, for instance, you contacted Jim Mays - I infer that you didn't speak with Alex Davis, and I know for a fact you didn't contact New Writers' Press. As I've said, I suspect a trick of perspective which could have stood some correction.

The great, but recent, counterexample to these historic affiliations is Randolph Healy's own Wild Honey Press, which has taken up where New Writers' Press left off, and is publishing the best poetry currently coming out of Ireland, across all boundaries. Long may it flourish!

Now, Ric, I'm off to Dublin tomorrow, so I'll have to rest on my laurels at this point. I think I must by now have dealt with the "wowtheyneverknew effect", even if only by talking it to death. Offer of a pint still stands.

Cheers,

Trevor

€€€

(12/6/98)
Ric,

Yesterday you wrote:

>- The Irish poets we included are: Coffey, Healy, Mills, Scully, Walsh.
>All will be news to most US readers, and to most UK readers too, although
>I'm happy to say that some have had some small press attention here. . . . Put it
>bluntly: Which one of those named is less Irish, more Anglo-tainted; which
>one would you shoot to make way for yourself? And can you show me *in
>their work* as opposed to their publication history how this shows itself?
>You're suggesting there's a distinction of which I'm ignorant, which lord
>knows is possible, but I'd be grateful if you could explain it to me.
 
Okay, to start with, 'peace' reciprocated. I'm not imagining conspiracies, personal vendettas, or bad faith here. Like I said in my first mail, " I want to be certain I've done what I can to overcome the wowtheyneverknew effect", and you're quite right to draw me out further on that, to call my bluff on it. That doesn't mean I'm going to assume your editor's role for the day as some sort of an inexpensive hobby, though. I dislike being an editor, and always have done, because it forces me to foreclose my enjoyment of texts before I'm ready to, and in ways I don't want. The exclusionary aspect of the role is one I only adopt when it's required in order for me to accent other work. Since I can accent here without need to exclude, I ain't going to do it.

But I'm not going to weasel out entirely. You ask "which one of those named is less Irish, more Anglo-tainted"? Now that seems to me to be imputing judgements to me which I've specifically rejected. I made the analogy of British poets being accomodated to a US agenda, remarked that some might be tolerant of that, and said, explicitly, that "I'd attach no necessary value-judgment to that". To introduce the term "Anglo-tainted" is to make a travesty of my position, in a manner which is directly contrary to all my work. I hope a little reconsideration here will let you rethink adducing such an attitude to me. I find British/Irish binaries no less tedious than any others.

Never have I even hinted that the work of the Irish poets you've included is not capable of being set beside what you've left out. If I felt them to be deficient or tainted in that way, I wouldn't have been doing my best to promote their work, and I wouldn't have proposed organizing a Cork Conference around their work as well as that of poets I've been associated with for over twenty years. What I have been trying to say is that you've selected from only one limited area of the spectrum. Now that I'm working on definite names, rather than merely my suspicion as to what those names might be, I can perhaps be a little more specific as to what that limitation might be.

I'm delighted to see you've included Brian Coffey - that's the one surprise to me in the names you've listed. Now, as the work of New Writers' Press, and particularly the critical writing of Michael Smith has laid out, Brian came from a rich context of Irish poetry, including also his friend Denis Devlin, Thomas MacGreevy, and Samuel Beckett. None of them was content to breathe the Twilit Yeatsian air circulating in Ireland then and, notably, none of them was greatly interested in contemporary British writing either. Instead, they reached to Europe, both classical and contemporary, and in some cases, to classic work in the Irish language. (Excuse my 'classic' here; it's a clumsy shorthand.)

As you probably know, there was some adoption of Devlin by American New Criticism, but his alignment remained fundamentally European. Same for MacGreevy and Beckett. The Roman Catholicism of Devlin and MacGreevy, shared also by Coffey, would have been a further factor here. Due to personal considerations, though, Coffey was forced to earn his living first in the US, and later in the UK. He never achieved his aim to return to Ireland in his last years. Due to this geographic and professional 'accident', Brian's work began to be attuned more to developments in the US and in England. Certainly, through his own tiny Advent Books in Southampton, he achieved an influence and a currency in the 'other' English scene unmatched by any of his friends excepting Beckett, who was not much regarded as a poet anyway. I was very struck at the '96 Assembling Alternatives conference in New Hampshire by how many of the English and American poets/critics I spoke to knew of Coffey (some even assuming he was English in origins), but how none of them had heard of Devlin, MacGreevy, or Niall Montgomery, say.

I would suggest that the four other poets you have named are definitely in the Coffey succession, so to speak, and that this is manifested in their work. If I remember correctly, Billy Mills, at least, has written on Coffey, and both he and Catherine Walshe have spoken to me about him in very warm terms. I believe the impact of Brian's work is registered strongly also in Maurice Scully's writing and, in quite a different way (Brian was trained as mathematician, chemist, and philosopher) in the work of Randolph Healy.

Let me be very explicit here: I am not suggesting that this marks in any way a deficiency in the work of these poets, merely that their work to date articulates (with considerable variety) the continuity of one specific element of the Irish poetry 'scene', an element which had already found itself in symbiosis (and creatively so, I believe), with the English 'other'.

So, this is to characterise (in a crude and summary fashion, but I write this with a large stack of technical specs by my elbow) the range of the 'other' Irish spectrum which you have included. What have you left out? Well, to start with, inclusion of MacGreevy and/or Devlin and/or Montgomery would have revealed the compexity and richness available, which has been bulldozed by the Heaney/Boland juggernaut. These figures mark real and living orientations for new writing, and I regret greatly that they continue to be ignored. Incidentally, Brian wasn't the only one to live on into our own time; Montgomery died only in the '80s.

Of living poets, I'd suggest Geoff Squires (strong resonances of late Beckett, and contemporary French writing), David Lloyd (French/Irish/American), Michael Smith (Devlin, Beckett, Spanish modernists) as well as myself (Beckett, Devlin, Chinese, Japanese). A breadth your list doesn't come near suggesting, I'd contend. You have also jumped, without any representation whatsoever, an entire generation of Irish experimenters. I believe that Alex Davis, who works in the English department in the college here in Cork, has dealt comprehensively with all this range of writing in a forthcoming critical work. That may do much to set the record straight, but I regret every opportunity lost, and I feel that your anthology may be revealed as unnecessarily but seriously flawed.

Well, that's it. I'm not trying to start a war here, any more than yourself, just to argue for a breadth I feel lacking, despite your best intentions. It is good, certainly, to see some attention being paid at last to Irish poets not chasing the big bandwagons. I recall when John Montague was editing the Faber Irish anthology, years ago, Mike Smith, who was included, noticed that Coffey wasn't. He wrote Montague to try to convince him of Brian's merits. Montague said get lost, and Mike then tried to organize a boycott by NWP poets on the list (I hadn't made the cut there, either). They all found reasons why, somehow, it would be inconvenient for them to pull out, so Mike wrote and said if Coffey was out, so was he. Montague said, okay then, Coffey's in but you're not. Since then, Montague, on being asked to name the most neglected Irish poet of the century picked guess who? Right: Brian Coffey.

I appreciate your taking the time and trouble to respond at length and, like I said, I have no ambitions to be the thought police. I see the job of proselytizing editors and critics to recognize the range and value of experimental Irish writing as a necessary complement to my own poetry. It's never easy, but it needn't be rancorous.

Buy you a pint in Cork, then?

Trevor


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Trevor Joyce
Apple Cork IS&T
Phone : +353-21-284405
EMail : [log in to unmask]
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