As a librarian, I've got to good-naturedly query Doug's approach to
classification! First off, his schedule's woefully short (there have been,
throughout the period under examination, centres of poetry without
allegiance to either Cambridge or London) and it leads him, as he must
admit, to putting some unwilling square pegs into round holes: 

1. Thomas A Clark Londonish? I just don't see it, either in his living,
his publication record, his circle of associates, or the nature of his
work.  Am I missing something? 

2. Whosir, mesir? Mottramish/Londonish tendencies? Seriously, I always
thought those lads at the Poetry Society were aping us lot in the NE... as
publisher and readings organiser I've consistently gone for poets from
both (as it were) camps, and I was pleased n proud to have work accepted
by clearly "Cambridge-tendency" mags such as Great Works and Grosseteste
Review (where I appeared alongside those notorious mottramites Crozier,
Duncan, Prynne and Wilkinson for instance...).

3. MacSweeney: for sure, appreciated in Cambridge (the equipage
printing of Pearl remains a landmark) but also in the inner circle of the
Mottram poetry society, published/read/reviewed extensively in the wicked
city. And we think of him as a Newcastle poet. For the record, Mottram and
Prynne were both guests at his wedding (in Newcastle). Chop him up and
bury him three places I say... 

I say this after having read Doug's necessary healthwarnings. My point is
that the only way you can make such generalisations work is by stretching
them to a point where it's almost meaningless, where you risk creating
false associations which damage the integrity of the argument, and, more
importantly, the poets. "Approximate" says Doug - indeed so.

I do want to bury Duncan's article, it's true. My whole instinct is not to
perpetuate its hurt. If Duncan had wanted to raise the serious issues Doug
refers to, surely he should not have degraded his own argument by such
things. I have to make it plain that I think he's gone too far in personal
abuse this time, and he will have to answer for it, loud and clear, for
his own self-respect I'd've thought, as well as for that old-fashioned
thing, decency. I hope those who've read the piece and know the man are
spelling this out to him.

How then shall we move on to the necessary discussion of "what public
space can poetry occupy"? I hope and believe we can do so without the
repeated analysis of last season's matches which seems so self-defeating. 
As an opener, here's my personal take, very loose and flowy, not a
theoretical gobbit in sight, but still, enough to chew on: 

I believe that the best way we make our space for poetry is by the poetry
itself. No poetry, no space. We grouse about the money, the bureaucracies,
the rivalries, the appalling working conditions and the fact that they
still don't offer us free bus passes, in very much the same way as farmers
grouse about europe, the weather, and the bloke down the valley - but we
carry in doing the job.  No-one makes us, we do it through some kind of
belief and ability. An audience isn't our due, it has to be earned and
re-earned each time we write (we've all seen poets of immense reputation
who've forgotten this fact and given a tedious reading because of it). 
Sometimes we get tempted to look at a cultural/economic model for our
activity, "the role of the poet in society discuss", forgetting perhaps
that one of the century's best poets put himself in the madhouse by so
doing. Sometimes we're tempted to play with a faintly market-oriented
model for it (that, for instance, a bigger market share must indicate a
better product, or that a better product deserves a bigger market share),
though we know how much we despise market models in other contexts. "Most
people ignore poetry because most poetry ignores most people" sounds
attractivish as a generalisation, but it leads to the golden calf of
"accessibility" and poetry so banal as to make you weep. "Make it new" 
sounds good enough but it leads to the misaprehension that the past has to
be dug up and paved over. Slogans don't help us make poetry; each of us
has to find our own way to do this (as I write this ramble I've had a
complete block on poetry practice for some time, but I've faith that it
will pass) - but only the work will earn the public place, and we don't
need to look far back in lit. hist. to realise that it's often slow in
doing this. Presumeably we don't mind this, or at least accept it with the
odd grouse or three, or we'd be doing something else by now. Audiences are
fragile ecosystems, like marine lifeforms on tidal rocks. They take ages
to accumulate, and a high wave can wash the whole lot away: but you have
to have the rocks in the first place, and they do return. It's the rocks,
you know, they cling to. Only the very small and meanminded will badmouth
a poet - of any kind or standing - who's apllied him/herself to the craft
in this spirit of craft and diligence over the years. Make the poems; they
justify their own space. 

Uh - think that's enuff to start with... thanks Doug...

R




%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%