JISCMail - BRITISH-IRISH-POETS Archives

It seems to me that most poets fight over their own turf and this is ridiculous when the allotment is calling. Go to any village, town or city allotment in Britain and you'll find an utter mix - diversity, ethnicity, communality and individuality all together. No allotment plot is the same. An aerial view of every allotment site is a patchwork tapestry of how this world could be - should be.

See over there two Asian women growing prize winning vegetables, herbs and flowers. Next to them, on one side, is a white fifty year old with financial problems. His allotment is fallow and he's scrambling his head how to realise his tiny dreams. On the otherside is a large "weird" scrappy family of many, who are just trying to extract anything from their plot to eat or to sell. Another thirty people - women and men - of all genetic/ethnic 'pasts' are on this allotment site.

Are the Asian prize growers fencing themselves in against the dysfunctional family or turning their backs on the poor white guy who hasn't a clue? No - not at all - the opposite. They share their produce, offer advice and get the kids digging for their dysfunctional parents.

Utopia? Not a bit of it. People need people on the allotment - or it is bulldozed. Also, in Britain - like Rambling and the Burston School Strike Rally and the Workers' Education Association - traditions that both celebrate and combat the ever present class division should/must be ever defended. The allotment association is not only providing gardens to work but are an opposition to corporate profit. The 'allotment' asserts that everyone is equal and different. Poets don't seem to like this idea.

That we have public funding for the arts in Britain has to be defended. But the democratisation of arts funding has to be fought for (or instead of an allotment we have a farmer and wage labourers).

I also think notions of 'poetic' arbitration on literary and artistic excellence is awful in Britain, reflected here on the List. I think it's just not on for Paul Green to say Benji Zephaniah is a crap poet. Benji has taken on wholesale Shelley's so called 'juvenile' poems. Percy Byshe was out there on the global allotment to change the world - as is Benji. As is Rosen, Nicholls and Mitchell in Britain. Why can't we share the plots?

Poets use others' voices - particularly working class voices. I think you'd all detest the fast growing working class group of writers I'm working with in Great Yarmouth. You are on your turf. Hey, I'm on their allotment! Rhyming couplets, drunks, lots of women, poverty, dignity, change.