Thanks, Mairead - all's clear here, and the "answers" below are - of
course - as incomplete as ever:

On Thu, 15 Apr 1999 [log in to unmask] wrote:
> 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?)

- I guess it's a balancing act: for so many UK/Irish writers the matter of
*region as much as nation can be important as an assertion of the values
of "where-I-come-from": these don't chop down neatly into any kind of
stereotypes though! As we seek to say in the intro, it's a plural old
world. I'd be the first to say that the speech around us conditions our
own speech, positively - an instance of this in OTHER might be Bill
Griffiths, who has dropped into Northeastern speech far more quickly and
productively than many who've lived here for years - or Geraldine Monk,
who uses her Lancashire speech as a jumping off point for some remarkable,
strong takes on language. Needless to say, I can't see any of the poets in
OTHER taking such cultural concerns to a point of "Nationalist Fervour" -
Bunting and MacDiarmid did have such discussions, towards the end of their
lives, but they were pretty drunk at the time.
 
> 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?"

- fair cop, again, we shied away from this one, and a number of other key
questions, in the intro - well, you've got to leave some stuff for the
academics to do afterwards, haven't you? Others will have their own
answers to it - but I must say that it's nothing to do with any perceived
lack of innovative women writers of quality: one glance at the Maggie
O'Sullivan anthology "Out Of Everywhere" should correct that. I'm no
expert on the demographics of poetry anthologies, but here's a few figures
(number of women contributors as a % of total contributors) from
anthologies close at hand to ponder:

A Various Art 5.26%
Children of Albion 6.34%
A State of Independance 11.11%
Conductors of Chaos 13.88%
Other 18.18%
Verbi Visi Voco 21.42%
Postmodern American Poetry 24.27%
Up Late 24.54%
Armitage & Crawford 30.49%
In The American Tree 31.57%
The New British Poetry 36.9%

> I don't
> expect right answers, apologies, caveats, or explanations -- just ideas.

Well, what can I say? I don't have many ideas, so I apologise. I'm not too
concerned about the difference between 18% and 24%, but those 30%s bother
me, as targets we might have attained but didn't. We could've "boosted"
"our" percentage by any number of strategies: in Armitage and Crawford
there seems to me to be a certain amount of "representationalism" going
on, where a number of poets are "represented" by only a token inclusion -
that didn't seem appropriate to us, or good for poets or readers. In The
New British Poetry there were four separately-edited sections, one of
which (ed. G. Alnutt) is devoted to "Quote Feminist Unquote Poetry". This
keeps the percentage up overall, though inclusion of women in the other
three sections is sometimes fairly low (Ken Edwards' "Younger Poets"
section has 22% which seems almost benchmark for UK) - and it has been
said that some of Alnutt's section is a bit wishywashy.

But where will this approach lead us overall? I have to say I've little
enough belief in such statistics as "quality indicators". What does strike
me is that the overall trend is upwards, and that's welcome. Beyond that,
I'd hoped we had produced an anthology which could be taken for what it
did include, rather than what it didn't. But I suppose every anthologist
hopes this.

On several occasions I've expressed the hope that this list would be open
to more women writers - I think that's important. I don't believe that any
of the women writers I know would say, ah, but you only included 18.18%
women in your anthology, piss off - but I could be wrong. One w.w. whose
opinions I respect and trust has said it's all about creating a place
where people don't feel threatened. As one who feels pretty damned
threatened everywhere these days I'm interested in constructing such a
place myself, and would welcome ideas on the subject.

So no answers, but more questions.

RC




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