Dear Rick,
Thanks for your thoughtful response to my somewhat casual post. My
comments on the OTHER fall more into the category of "wonder" or
"question" than "criticism." Why should I quibble about the title or
line-up of your anthology? No. If I had just minted my own anthology I
might be say, "There big boy mine is better than yours!" But
I haven't and it would be callow simply to express dissatisfaction with
the (fine) job you and Peter Q did. So, my comments were more in the line
of: I'd like to see this issue of nationalism/nationality addressed
(especially in the context of the shedding of nationalism in Western
Europe and the bloody grappling for it in Eastern Europe?)
Secondly, I was disappointed that the introduction did not address the
(surely interesting) fact that only 20% of the poets included were women.
Again, my point is not "Why didn't you include more women you bastard" but
"What are the possible reasons for the dearth of women poets here?"
For example, is it something to do with the field of OTHER poetry itself?
Is it something to do with Britain or Ireland? Or Europe? Is there a
similar dearth in the U.S.? Is there a certain compensatory conservatism
at work in "experimental poetry" -- is "experiment" linked to maleness, in
some way, what are the connections between gender and form, gender and
identification as an OTHER poet, etc?
The reason I would have liked to see this addressed in the introduction is
simply because I am interested in it and occasionally wonder about such
questions myself. There was no triumphalism or finger-pointing or
wagging intended in my comments: Douglas's post prompted me to ask a few
questions which had been on my mind since my first meeting with the book.
I think they're good questions and worth considering: I don't
expect right answers, apologies, caveats, or explanations -- just ideas.
All the best,
Mairead
On Thu, 15 Apr 1999, R I Caddel wrote:
> Hi Mairead! and thanks for your post on OTHER. It's a bit sad when all
> that varied poetry gets reduced to a bodybag count, I think, but I'll have
> to put hand up and say (as I've said before on this list) Yes, there
> aren't enough Irish poets in OTHER. Sorry. Also, there aren't enough women
> poets in it, ditto. Likewise, since we mention it it, not enough Scots. Or
> Welsh poets. The black poets are also underrepresented (though the
> response I've had from Fred D'Aguiar said nothing of this, but was wildly
> enthusiastic about the *range covered in the anthology as a whole). There
> aren't enough of the excellent younger poets of these islands. Select any
> of the longstanding regional or poetic groupings of the place, and you'll
> find serious omissions. I'm aware of huge shortfalls in the coverage of
> the sound/visual/performance poetry scene.
>
> And so on - proportional representation it ain't, fair cop, and it
> certainly makes no claims to being canonical. But I hope that enough of
> the work is new to you, and exciting enough, in its various ways, for you
> not to feel you've wasted your hard-earned dosh on it!
>
> You ask the important question: "Why should the "Other" be defined by
> nationality anyway? What part does nationality play in Other poetry?" In a
> way I agree with you - as we've said before on this list, one day we won't
> have to make such artificial groupings. But in pragmatic terms, we were
> faced with that "completely buried modernist/experimental tradition" which
> Maurice Scully refers to, which operates in both UK and Ireland: we wanted
> to do something to excavate it for new readers. Of course, we're not alone
> in this, and there are glimmers which suggest that folk are becoming more
> aware of what was buried. But in case you're in any doubt about the
> "otherness" of these poets, take a look at the bunch of of big UK
> anthologies which have just come out: Armitage and Crawford; O'Brien;
> Forbes. "Dolly the Anthology" one list member referred to them as - each
> covering exactly the same ground as each other, and with a ludicrously low
> overlap factor with OTHER. It's like we lived somewhere else. Armitage n
> Crawford feign shortsightedness - noting of the likes of Bunting, Jones
> and MacDiarmid that they "seem something of an isolated, if exciting,
> outcrop in the post-war geography" - to produce this effect they've had to
> overlook the whole tradition which relates to them!
>
> With OTHER we had an opportunity to introduce a bunch of writers with
> honourable and significant outputs to an audience which, to be frank,
> hadn't a hope of discovering many of them them for themselves. It would've
> been great to've had more pages (about twice as many for starters) and a
> budget to match - but we really didn't think we could squeeze those out of
> our hard pushed publishers! Maybe next time...
>
> RC
>
>
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