Look I'm as offended as the next britpo list member by all this Atlanta
Review / BritCo stuff. But you can't tell me you're actually surprised,
surely ? This is the way it always is, folks. The channels are fixed,
and quangoes back their friends just as the TLS reviewers review theirs
etc. It's not nice, but it's the way the world works.
Now if I was head of BritCo, if xxxx (insert name of yr choice) were
editor of AR, we would never discriminate against the Lavinia Greenlaws
and Simon Armitages of this world would we? No of course not, we'd just
leave them out on the grounds that their work was third rate - this
isn't discrimination, it's the exercise of taste. But you see Armitage
in his new anthology (and the other guy, whoever it was) and the AR
selector did this themselves. They can't see for the life of them why
(say) Allen Fisher or Tom Raworth should be judged as being poets. I
likewise cannot understand why anyone would wish to read Simon Armitage.
Of course I'm not wrong, they are.
The problem is that there are (at least) two worlds out there, and they
don't talk to each other. These worlds do not understand a single word
of what each other is saying: on that basis it isn't surprising that the
anthology selections are biased. So I agree that the only answer is to
get the dialogue out there, fight them on their own turf. Can some of
you (better writers than I, better debaters) not try to do it ? I'll
continue to snipe from the pages of Shearsman, but my credentials don't
stack up the way those of other list-members will.
A last word. A bit sour perhaps, but if we were in charge (i.e. the
madmen taking over the asylum) wouldn't we be just as narrow-minded as
this fellow from AR ? (I'm assuming the BC is narrow-minded a priori).
Fight the good fight,
Tony Frazer
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