>>Before we get any further into this, let's have it
understood that this is a lively disagreement, not a personal
row.
Absolutely, Sean. I'm not in the habit
of rowing with my peers, especially with one who hasn't lost an argument
since the heyday of disco. But I don't think calling the OUP list
'little-lamented' was even a 'personal' opinion - that's just the way it is,
though I don't expect those who were mucked about to agree. I should
also note that I imagine the OUP editors would offer a good defence as to
why things declined into such a vulnerable state.
Re Chatto, it may be a small list, but with
Bernard O'Donoghue, Gerard Woodward, Ruth Padel, John Fuller, Alan Jenkins
and Kate Clanchy, it has enjoyed significant success in recent years, with
many awards, including some bestowed by your good self.
>> 'Subsidy junkies' is too vague a
term for the range of funding sources involved.
Yes, of course, I was being somewhat
crass. My anti-subsidy tendencies are not very fashionable. I
just hate to see dreck being subsidised through unwarranted handouts to
publishers while working poets struggle on £10,000 a year.
There's a whole article to be written on and around this - the need to
publish excellent, complex work which will never sell much versus the
subsidy-raised hopes of heartbroken minor poets etc. And OUP certainly
wasn't a major culprit.
>> Picador started before OUP closed. Therefore the
number of possibilities is reduced.
I still don't get what you think is gained by an increased
number of possibilities. There's still more than enough room for all
the most talented poets - and to allow the waning ones to continue
publishing in their dotage. But an off-list poet with whom I discussed
this put it in a way I hadn't thought of, thus:
"Sean seems to be equating "possibilities"
being narrowed (i.e. the amount of new writing that can get published) with
some qualitative decrease. Not so. As you say, other lists have picked up
the best of the rest and new work of any significance will always be picked
up by the likes of Don, Neil Astley and Robin. He is being a bit romantic if
he thinks that "possibilities" are kind of "out there"
waiting to enhance the canon. Nothing is further from the truth. The likes
of Alice, Paul, you, me et al were not invited in, we gate-crashed.
Energetic new writers will do that. It's irrelevant how many invites are
printed."
yrs gatecrashingly,
Roddy