From: Alan Baker <[log in to unmask]>
To: 'British Poets' <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: 26 October 1999 11:36
Subject: RE: Bill Griffiths


| Sorry about the 'somesuch'.  Here is the actual quotation from the
introduction
| to 'Starfish Jail':
|
| '...prisons have a sacrificial role; and survive (like the majority of
contemporary
| literature?) solely to support the myth of middle class privileged
existence by creating
| a sector of the population that can be abused, confined and dehumanised.
The ratio is
| probably one lyric sonnet to every 3-day senetence in solitary
confinement.'

Don't be sorry. It was quite an interesting precis and transformation

| All I meant was that some people (myself included at times) turn to poetry
not for uncomfortable
| home truths, but for confirmation of pre-conceived notions of what poetry
is, and what
| their own relation to it is. This Griffiths does not give them.  Many
readers will
| unfortunately turn off at that point, and it seems likely that Bill
Griffiths
| will therefore remain a minority interest.

& I should arrange my books better. I've got a new Griffiths here, the
Selerie / Halsey Days of 49, an exhibition catalogue I'm in and gawd knows
what else here teetering on the system box. That's ok but when I do what
ever I do with them I am inclined to put them in some other teetering
position...

Re your comment... Those who read poetry " for confirmation of pre-conceived
notions of what poetry is, and what  their own relation to it is. " do not
qualify, in my cosmogeny, as reading poetry, but rather a mental form of
masturbation. It tells us nothing about poetry because they are not engaging
with it. We have the same problem politically, to go forward to your next
question, where *allowing people to make decisions on the basis of
incomplete information and prejudice is called democracy.

Rule them out and redo the calculation and perhaps Griffiths doesn't
function as minority interest any more, though all of poetry may. It would
be difficult to quantify. It takes a long time to know if someone is
open-minded. Asking them will usually produce an affirmative response.

| Leading on from this though: Griffiths espouses a very clear political
philosophy (which
| many readers may reject).  Is it possible to engage with his poetry
without sharing
| his views?  And if so, is that engagement on a purely aesthetic level?  Is
it a real
| engagement at all?

Well, I think so. I don't think that I share Bill's philosophy. Is it that
clear? I share a lot of it, I think. I feel a lot more at home, mentally and
poetically, with Bill than I do with most people. But I doubt that we would
find ourselves in accord widely.

I think what matters is that there *is a political engagement. That's rare.
And alongside it or as part of it, perhaps, there is Griffiths' drive for
precision - or call it honesty... not just the drive to get the lighting
right for a shot for a family album

But politics isn't, surely, a matter of being the same as each other -
that's politics annihilating politics - but of finding ways of co-operating
and giving each other space, of opening each other to new ideas. All of that
I get from BG's poetry and I find the aesthetic and the political often
moving together in his poetry. It isn't just the subject matter he chooses
but the manners (slight pun intended) and methods with which he writes

I don't know what a "purely aesthetic engagement" would be. I read, for
instance, Milton, without the political situation from which he was writing
existing any longer... Ditto Shelley, ditto Blake - slightly anachronistic
ordering there

I don't know if that's any use. Off the top of my head, which is full of
other things. Muddled perhaps.

Lawrence



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