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This rings a good many bells, Jon . . . there did seem to be a sudden rash of poems about blackberry picking and grandparents from the early 80s onwards. I wrote one of these awaful things myself -- 'My Father's Coat' (which coincidentally appeared in Chapman). Insipid stuff. Used to call them Lawn Poems, if I remember. A kind of modern pastoralism, an excessive treasuring of surface detail with a feeble moral embedded somewhere (if you were really lucky . . . .) Like Alison I'm also curious to know how far this suburbanite strand is specific to women writers -- are there guys also? What about the likes of Hugo Williams? Is it just too many women reading too much Seamus Heaney?? The male writers from the early 80s onward I seem to remember not so much for their suburban trifles but for their interminable ironic narratives -- rather heartless fare. Verbal party-pieces. More along the lines of your 'City Kids' in fact. Anyway -- was there a clear gender divide between these two groups, in your opinion? I guess to return the ball into the other court, I received a MS the other day from a friend of mine in the States, a first volume due out next year. There was a marked difference in tone from your average UK fare -- virtually no lyric sensibility at all . . . . rather flat, very prosey, very earnest. I'm wondering what camps the younger US writers may be divided into . . . . Andy P.S. Gerry Cambridge -- fine chap with a fine beard. %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%