Keith's e mail repays closer attention than I think it has received. The
discussion swept on into areas such as the academy as a respite from
the world of ecoonomic exchange, which shall return to.
The text of the apparently fictional "mainstream" poet surely proves my
sense of it as a construct: you know what it is when you are excluded
from it. The "middle ground" is an interesting metaphor: flat, spatial, for all
to see; the "English line" is an even better one: the slight poet-by-poet
modulation that passes for tradition in British poetry.
The tone of pique is unmistakeable: the sense that the inclusion of
serious poets such as Prynne and Rileys (whatever one thinks of them)
is equivalent to some of those listed as absent from this anthology:
Wendy Cope or Maxwell to pick the easy examples. An "unbearably
high" cost.
The suggestion that the book will get a "good kicking" by reviwers may
be more of a prediction and less of a threat: surely our reader, who
complains about his own omission, and can fix things behind the scene
(as has Tom Paulin this week getting Muldoon (he of Quoof: see Wayne
Pratt's Spoof on Quoof) electied Poetry Professor at Oxford, the single
candidate when the rest of them are fawning to become PPoet
Laureatte.)
There is a bigger issue here that concerns this kind of externaity" to
those of us who work in the academcy but are dedicated to
non-mainstream poetry:
1. publishers' readers of anthologies and academic books. Is there clear
evidence of rejection or of suggested changes to selections and (much
worse for academic democracy) of amendments to academic focus in
academic books. (Ie: "you can't publish a book on British poetry without a
chapter on Andrew Motion")?
2. external consultants and examiners interfering in course design or
delivery? Either in teaching reading or writing. I have expereinced the
description of my poetry courses as "narrow" buy an external
consultant. The proposed writing "textbook" was the marvellous
Rothenberg and Joris Poems for the Millennium Volume two which
contains 800 of world poetry from Oppen to Braithwaite, from Bracho to
Ishkrenko (who? you may ask.)
Our poetry is not safe in the IIvory Tower, not least of all in the kind of
heavily monitored (rightly so) sector in which I (happily, I must say) make
my crust. Indeed, part of the criteria for much creative writing seems to
be "publishability", which is an unsurmountable one for the linguistically
innovative, avantgarde (delete and supply (as some havwe on this list )
interesting replacements.
Robert Sheppard
State of the Art Address May 1999:
Actually I shall use part of this in my paper at the Unpacking the
Anthology Confertence to be held at Edge Hill, Lancashire on July 16
1999 when the politics of many anthologies will be raised. Details to be
posted in this e space soon.
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
|