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the trouble is that Blair has put the S back into shit. But it goes beyond that to a cultural null that makes the Thatcher era look like an oasis, a Renaissance of creativity, and the Spice Girls her Michaelangelo. Not only has the dismal mind of Blair created war in Afghanistan, but is now shuffling the cards with Iraq. After a while I realised that the Big Brother message of all this is ´hey, you may have been sent to sleep during the ´90s, but the world is, after all - and it isn´t as if I haven´t been moaning on about it over and over again, tirelessly - a serious and dangerous place, told you so..na, na´. If Blair could find a brain, he would be, as the cliche goes, dangerous. And out of all this - does the word ´bollocks´ really sum it all up? - poets and artists won´t submit to be political or committed - in case the grant funding drys up. This was the conclusion of one poet at the john Hewitt Summer School in August - it has been obvious for some time. Actually artists had this same problem way back- as the conscience of humanity they often had to face poverty in order to say what they had to say. Read Hobsbawm´s ´Age of Revolutions´ for this, a worthy enough tome, although sickened by facts and dates, he gives us some anyway. The analysis is that history is not the biography of great men. For all that, as Hobsbawm writes, Robespierre was not a great man, but, thankfully, as Hobsbawm would have it, Hobsbawm is! PM >From: "david.bircumshaw" <[log in to unmask]> >Reply-To: Poetryetc provides a venue for a dialogue relating to poetry and > poetics <[log in to unmask]> >To: [log in to unmask] >Subject: Re: Numbers >Date: Tue, 26 Nov 2002 23:40:30 -0000 > >Merci, cher Henry > >I'm not so much bothered about publishing outlets these days, my stuff, >whether good or bad, seems to have a way of finding its openings anyhow, >but >what does concern is the 'literary climate'. These concerns are not so much >sociological as almost spiritual, summat seems rotten in the state of >Denmark and it seems to suppress expression. I don't know what the answer >is: the other year I set up my own mag, it has been favourably received yet >at the same time I had a sense of something like leeches or psychic >vampires >battening on to it (and I don't mean the contributors by that!) and it's >left me in an impasse, I can sense a way forward but can't see where the >support is in the current cultural situation. > >Hope this makes sense. > >Best > >Dave > > > >David Bircumshaw > >Leicester, England > >Home Page > >A Chide's Alphabet > >Painting Without Numbers > >http://homepage.ntlworld.com/david.bircumshaw/index.htm >----- Original Message ----- >From: "Henry Gould" <[log in to unmask]> >To: <[log in to unmask]> >Sent: Tuesday, November 26, 2002 7:56 PM >Subject: Re: Numbers > > >Dave, I sympathize. I can also identify with the emotions you express. > >But ultimately it seems to me that the best approach is a sort of >professional attitude. By professional I don't mean "careerist". > >A professional cares so much about the profession or the vocation that the >ego part becomes irrelevant. This is complicated in the case of poetry >because it's an activity that is a contradictory amalgam of "winning >rhetoric" and public performance on the one hand, and the often intentional >distance and solitude involved in writing. Actually it's an ideal that >remains just that for the most part, regardless of the profession. But >it's a necessary factor. > >I have always been intrigued by the early Acmeists in pre-Revolution >Petersburg, meeting around a big table once a month or so and presenting >papers & readings, striving to create an extremely "formal" >atmosphere. The idea was that quality in writing both requires and offers >a kind of objectivity. > >If you keep this sort of objectivity in mind - when you write, when you >look for publishing outlets, when you look for things to read - I think you >might discover finally that the devotion & single-mindedness this attitude >requires simply makes issues of mass popularity, in-group dynamics, >careerism, etc, etc, actually IRREVELANT to what you do every day in & >around poetry. By no means does such an attitude exclude looking for >publishing outlets, etc. That can be a critical exercise & adventure in & >of itself, I imagine. If you focus on what moves you & delights you, both >in your approach to your own work & in your reading, that is the best way >to use the time & concentration you apply to this wacko hobby. All the >rest - just faggeddabbadit. Focus on what you like. Sociological >considerations are almost always irrelevant to literary quality anyway. So >are regrets about what we think we didn't accomplish in the past (I hear >you, Douglas!), because creativity beckons out of the secret happiness we >find NOW. > >I'm doodling about this not because I live up to it myself very well (I >work across the street from one of the largest poetry collections in the >world, and hardly ever go look at it, I'm embarrassed to say). . .just >because I think it's the right attitude. > >Henry _________________________________________________________________ The new MSN 8: smart spam protection and 2 months FREE* http://join.msn.com/?page=features/junkmail