I can sympathise with Simon's frustration because NJ goes for what he wants
and assumes that everyone else will bend over backwards to help him, but
what he wants is usually a good thing and not self-motivated except
indirectly.

No, the villany lies in that assumption of two kinds of poetry, Left and
Mainstream. It is such nonsense and it does so much harm but everyone from
Andrew Duncan to the Poetry Society to the Blackburn Beatniks (anyone
remember the Blackburn Beatniks?) insists and insists on it. Why? Because
it simplifies the tasks I suppose. The Voicebox people have trouble with
Johnson and say we're not having any more of "that kind" of poetry, which
is a totally meaningless (and illogical) assumption but simplifies their
task. We had similar problems in this town with the Judith Wilson
Fellowship when a certain American person almost wrecked the University and
there were no more "poets" got that job for years.

Actually the exclusion of a large sector of British poets from Voicebox on
completely arbitrary grounds is one of the scandals of the present scene. A
worse one is the exclusion of British poets (except one) from Royaumont
and other international reward insitutions. The worst of all is ..........
but I have gone on about that before and it's Christmas.

It's impossibly difficult to fight these things. People insist on
categories which have no reality, like Mainstream, Class, Race, Gender...
and you just can't shake them out of it, and if you try to, the inbuilt
dialectics stand you accused of all sorts of crimes. It's no wonder people
withdraw into a more meaningful zone of sufficient externality.

Work that one out with your crackers!

Janet Lewis has died. Nice obituary in Guardian by Clive Wilmer.


//PR




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