Dear List,
I beg to point that David Kennedy’s message of 19 Nov could
be open to misinterpretation - and I am sure he would wish
me to clear up any false impression the lack of dating
might cause.
He says he has asked Peter Forbes about Poetry Review’s
circulation ‘since 1970’, but the figures that follow seem
exclusively to be drawn from the 1980s and 1990s. The date
I have for Andrew Motion as editor is 1982, followed by
Mick Imlah and Peter Forbes. It is not altogether surprising
therefore that Peter Forbes can tell us nothing about
circulation figures in the 1970s, and I am puzzled as to
what the relevance is supposed to be of this red herring
‘from the horse’s mouth’.
Mind, I am very happy to learn that the circulation of PR
improved in the 1980s and 1990s, and am glad that others
were able to build on Mottram's success. Sales had improved
after all in Mottram’s time, and might have improved more
if there had not been such internal and external opposition.
Basil Bunting warned Mottram that more should be done to distribute
Poetry Review, but in the pre-computer era when every act
of correspondence and post meant taking the time of the office
staff - some of whom were not well disposed to the new
active image the PoSoc was gaining - great advances were not
easily achieved.
The first two Mottram issues of Poetry Review, for example,
nearly did not appear at all. Someone had encouraged the
printer to feel concerned that bad language was evident
in the verse, and might lead to prosecution. (This concern
was later leaked to the Press, apparently by a member of
the PoSoc Council.) A more Mottramesque member of the Council
- as I am telled - had to visit the printer and argue as
follows: Mottram was an officer of Her Majesty’s Navy -
and a gentleman - and his good judgement could be depended
on, so there was nothing to worry about on the literary front.
I cannot personally vouch for the accuracy of this anecdote,
but it seems at least as interesting as Peter Forbes’
apparent recollections of an ‘inexact science’ in the wrong decade.
In the matter of critical assessment - I don’t think you can.
I don’t think you can rate or berate poems by some supposed
objective set of values. Even by sales figures, let alone medals
or rank. Or county of composition or address at which grant aid
was bestowed. I certainly don’t think you can swing the weighty
testimony of history around your head like a club and try to write
out those you think have had no influence or no right to any
influence. I suggest you can only explain a poem’s relationship to
its culture, explore its validity in a context and be moderately
greatful that pioneers like Mottram did do something to encourage
Cultural Studies rather than build more walls and myths round
Literature in a holy isolation.
bill
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