Some non-Barque books which however I would like for persons to know of:

Possibly and correct me Peter they could be ordered from Peter:

Tim Morris, Ex Nihilo (self published)
Tim Morris, Two Poems (ditto)
Keston Sutherland, Scratchcard Sally-Ann (Nominative Press Collective)


Tim's poems are what I read now when I want to be sanguine about new
poetry -- can I recommend the (slender) Two Poems particularly



CCCP: typically I was lashed just short of projectile for a good part of
this, and found only synopses coagulating where bigger pictures ought

but shall say in a flurry of inevitability that I thought Andrea Brady's
reading was stunning and incisive, rare

I enjoyed Lisa Robertson too

Most others less so, there was a kind of endemic orthodoxy too immediately
apparent, for me at least

I can't admire Lee Harwood, or Michael Palmer, or Robert Adamson

Palmer's satisfaction with sealed-off & iterative verbal loci struck me as
complacent (quad this, quad that, quad anything, quad full stop). The
crossover from this verbal halflight to European disaster seemed so
patently reflective that nothing now disturbeth him, or me as I crouched.

Lee Harwood I thought far too patient and considerate to be honestly
contemplative. Proceeding from the basis that there has been no drastic
diminution of the auratic Romanticism attaching to euphrastic descriptions
of Nature, is still a -procedure-, and may as well be LED as pale
sunlight, filtered through a salt stained air. Robert Adamson was just
too co-dependent, the plausibility of his syntax seemed self-arresting and
to slip into the easy indictment of just being a remote ancillary to West
Coast US writing now quite solidly dirempted from the Real World. Unless
the real world can still be viewed through one kind of drizzle only, one
set of net curtains, from one all too savaged prow.

Ralph Hawkins was pretty good I think. His mordancy clashes with a pretty
elemental nerve and hope to swerve out of mawkish self-pacification, I
like this, but figure it only goes so far and wishes to only.

Michel Deguy I couldn't sink my teeth into, how many times do we have to
believe it when we're told eg that the vagina is the origin of the earth,
climactically as a woman is spun off in a series of comparisons to high
art products long since stuffed into galleries with the men's names pinned
to the wall next to them. His satire was more gum than snap.

Phillipe Beck made some extraordinary and apt remarks concerning poetry
and hate. He is at once so timorous and so bold, and I suspect from his
grin during Deguy, so prepared.

Erin Moure was lively and made points as no-one else quite did, I liked
her points unless (as too frequently) they seemed to pile up into lists
and the whole attitude of question-posing struck out any danger of
variance other than with the presumed audience. Perhaps posing is right.
A worry perhaps that smart recalcitrance can infract the chance for
dialectic too far into oblivion, leave only the rhetoric of individuation
to set up a great query.


Of course these are all most cursory thoughts, not intended to persuade
or dissuade. A start. k
    










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