-----Original Message-----
From: Roger Day <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask] <[log in to unmask]>
Date: 02 July 1998 12:36
Subject: SVP - Ric Caddel and Lee Harwood

|Lee Harwood
|didn't make the connection, though: there was the hush of attention which
|bespoke concentration of trying to make sense of the poetry rather than
|being caught up in the performance.

Perhaps that was your experience but I *fail to see how you could possibly
know this. I doubt you are right. My doubt is based on having seen Lee
perform over many years and having talked to people about it - including
previous appearance at SVP - rather than the pathetic fallacy of judging
everything by my own subjective experience

|For myself, I didn't like the
|performance (emotional colour was lacking with that wispy voice and he
|didn't engage me) or the poetry (too arty, too bourgeois - I mean, a
|"simple room in Paris"?).

_emotional colour was lacking with that wispy voice_ - oh dear I hope my
voice allows emotional colour... how sad to live a life incapable of
emotional colour

|_(too arty, too bourgeois - I mean, a "simple room in Paris"?

yes, what *do you mean? _arty_ and _bourgeois_ mean whatever you want them
to
mean... and one quotation without analysis to damn by implication a lifetime
of work and half an hour of reading

I used not to like Lee's work particularly. It takes time. It takes work. It
takes a willingness not to settle for shallow response. It is rewarding. I
recommend you try harder at this; but that will mean abandoning
dismissiveness... It took me time. I owe a lot to Robert Sheppard who kept
saying things like _listen_ and then _listen again_; that and the number of
people whose judgement I trust who were always listening intently... But you
have to be open...

|Not even, as far as I could tell, for line-endings or
|verses.

Perhaps you should limit yourself to the visual arts

|it came out as a shapeless ramble,

to you perhaps

|with little attention to the emotional journey through the poetry.

spare me emotional journeys

|Bits of
|the poems were interesting, but nothing stood out - there was something
|about politics, bits about something else, but it was all kind of rambly
|and disjoint. One section was about(?) the death of his son, but I didn't
|feel that this section was anymore special than the rest.

Now I remember why I was so pleased to get away from teaching English
Literature - it was reading the atrocious homework full of unsubstantiated
opinions


I used to say then _you are welcome to hold your own opinions but unless you
can justify them they are of absolutely no value_ - never thought I would
have to say that here

His performance
|stance was stock-still with, unlike Lee Harwood, no eye-contact with the
|audience. Then I noticed that he was being recorded. It brought to mind
|Southey, trying to write himself into history with copious amounts of
|poetry. His peers seemed to like it, though: after such a marathon session,
|there was hearty applause.

But it wasn't a marathon. It wasn't that long. It wasn't that copious. This
is a very rude comparison. Where did such ill will come from?

I thought *my write up was bad!

L




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