Andrew Duncan's article is a (verbiose) but essentially deeply serious attempt
to comprehend what happened in British poetry in the 1970s and 80s. It raises
a key contradiction between structural political awareness (social
construction of self) and personal vision in small press poetry and refuses
any easy choice between these two modes. This argument is of high importance.

Unfortunately, its criticism of Thomas A. Clark and Bill Griffiths' work is
infected by a personalised aggression as if aped from the baron-run national
press, and it has borrowed from somewhere (Poetry Society propaganda?) what
may be badly wrong figures about Poetry Review's circulation. These figures
must be a question of record at the Poetry Society. So let's have the record.
Call in on them and get them, someone.

I notice that no one has taken up Andrew's remark that audiences at Poetry
Society readings fell sharply (this is not necessarily a criticism from me,
note). That again may have left some record.

But, then, hardly anyone contributing to this discussion has read Duncan's
article. If they had, we might have had a really interesting debate on Clive
Bush's book, which Duncan was reviewing. And I would not think that this list
has gone trivial.

However, as falsehood (if falsehood it was) should not go uncorrected, listees
might well write to Tim Fletcher asking him to open a proper debate in a
subsequent issue on what really happened to Poetry Review under Eric's
editorship -- figures, and so on. I shall write suggesting this myself. Bill
Griffiths has made a start and it is proper for him, particularly, as keeper
of Eric's archives, to want to correct the record. It would be very
regrettable if this effort should run into any personalised obstacles.

But that's enough. I cannot support anyone in an argument who looks round at
his many friends and says come on support me against these two other guys. I
am a great fan of Bill Griffiths' poetry as I am of Andrew Duncan's, but
Andrew's opinion of Bill's work (or of Thomas A. Clark's) is none of my
business. Only the other day, some critic called my own work "dire". It took
me a whole ten minutes to get over it.

It's the kind of petty thing that robs all of our energies. Can't the damn
quarrel between Cambridge and London be laid to rest at last? Or are we
doomed to Cambridge snobbishness on the one hand and London myth-making on the
other, accompanied with frequent complaints of "He said it first!"? "He,"
because this is masculine territory, folks.

Doug


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