-----Original Message-----
From: Jim Bennett <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask] <[log in to unmask]>
Date: 28 October 1998 09:25
Subject: Re: Quangos


|Oh and I think it is unfair to snipe at the apparent success of other
poets,
|even if it is not a poetry form that appeals.  They are finding an
audience.
|And if that audience is American and they are going down well there, it
|makes it easier in the long haul for others to follow.


I don't think that I agree with that at all - the-brits-are-coming view? Nor
is it sniping neither in the metaphorical sense nor the actual. It seems
that what is being said here is that the BC is getting it wrong. The attack
is upon them. As I recall, the strongest that has been said against poets is
an expression of incomprehension regarding Armitage.

|There has always been a flourishing reading scene, but I could equally
|complain (because I live in Liverpool) that if you do not live in London or
|Oxford or Glasgow or wherever and unless the editors of specific magazines
|think your face fits, you end up with five minutes at an open mike to get
|noticed.

It isn't clear to me what you are talking about - readings, publications or
both? Or something else? I know little or nothing about Oxford except where
the bookshops and pubs are in the centre or not to go there by mistake when
boarding a train at Reading, but it seems to me that there is precious
little going on in Glasgow. There isn't that much going on in many places.

Editors exercise editorial choice. What we need is more outlets and more
editors to go with them. If they are basing their choice on prejudice, then
they are doing it wrongly - and if they are having an influence beyond their
magazines then that is likely to be wrong. It is the kind of corruption that
affects the British Council - which is not to say that all that the BC does
is bad, only that they are overly venial in their approach.

L

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Lawrence Upton's website: http://members.spree.com/sip/lizard/
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"WORD SCORE UTTERANCE CHOREOGRAPHY in verbal and visual poetry"
edited by Bob Cobbing and Lawrence Upton
Writers Forum, London, 1998; 156 pp; ISBN 0 86162 750 4
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