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Peter, I can see your point that Sheppard's mag may have a tendency 
towards exclusivity, perhaps he sees poetics as something that can 
only be fruitfully discussed within an academic framework, a pseudo-
science, if you like. 





On Wed, 14 Oct 2009 15:40:50 +0100, Peter Riley 
<[log in to unmask]> wrote:

>O shit. It's been a dreadful week.
>
>Geraldine --- I withdraw and apologise unconditionally. That was a
>very wrong thing of me to say. I was carried away. I thought perhaps
>you hated all universities.
>
>But it seems there's something particularly evil about Cambridge
>University. There's a lot to resent about the place but I can't see it
>like that. There are people in this University, as in others, doing
>extremely valuable work in all sorts of fields (including ecology,
>global developmental studies, anthropology, medicine... I don't
>necessarily include poetry as one of those fields). To them it is a
>place of work. Of course there are all sorts of privileges still
>attached to the place, as equally to Oxford and to many of what we
>contemptuously used to call "red-brick" universities. The private
>school intake is still entirely disproportionate and it's a disgrace,
>though I think the best solution would be simply to ban private
>education.
>
>If CLR was "reviewed" in TLS (actually it wasn't reviewed at all;
>Campbell's column is a joke thing on the back page which lists things
>in order to scoff at them; when TLS reviews it reviews properly)
>because it is from Cambridge University, which as I said it isn't,
>that's only because Campbell is from Oxford University and saw an
>opportunity to act out that boring old animosity. I think he's also a
>friend of Craig Raine, who was somewhat criticised.
>
>Anyway I'm not a denizen of this University and I'm not responsible
>for it. Nor are a lot of other contributors to CLR. And Boris Jardine
>and Lydia Wilson devoted on enormous amount of work and care to 
CLJ,
>including making sure it fairly represented what this town has meant
>in poetry, and all they get is aggression deflected from hatred of the
>University.
>
>The Journal of British and Irish Innovative Poetry seems to be a far
>more academic, university-bound, production, than CLR. I doubt if
>anybody not in the employ of a university wd have a chance of being
>published in it. And it doesn't print poetry at all. Not that there's
>anything necessarily wrong with this, but there seems to be an
>onslaught against CLR as the product of an academy when what it is is
>simply a literary magazine with a particular focus.  There is an
>interesting account in it of a homosexual encounter between a young
>poet and a well-known monk -- not the sort of thing that would find
>its way into Robert Sheppard's magazine, I think.
>
>
>
>Peter
>
>
>
>
>On 14 Oct 2009, at 13:13, Geraldine Monk wrote:
>
>Peter,
>How on earth can you conclude that I 'imply that on one has the right
>to a higher education at all' from what I said!!  I'm totally
>flabbergasted by your conclusion.  There is absolutely nothing I said
>that you can remotely construe this ridiculous implication.  I have
>never come across such a willful misreading (or to be more exact an
>imaginary reading).  I did not say that and as someone who benefitted
>from an higher education I do not and never had believed such a
>thing.  I'm actually very angry about this Peter because people don't
>read these lists with great care (as you demonstrate here) and stupid
>comments like this often stick even when you haven't' said them.
>
>I was not being personal - I was not talking about students
>backgrounds - I was saying that  Cambridge University is a privileged
>and prestigious institution - that is indisputable (well to everyone
>except you Peter).  If anyone else on this list brought out a mag from
>say Sheffield or Leicester or Portsmouth or  Wherever do you think it
>would get a mention in TLS - of course it wouldn't.  That was part of
>my point.  You are complaining about a review that has only come 
about
>because of its Cambridge connection.   I merely said the rest of us
>would welcome such attention.
>
>In fact I wonder if  The Journal of British and Irish Innovative
>Poetry edited by Scott Thurston and Robert Sheppard and with an
>editorial board covering every university in the world (I exaggerate
>but it's very extensive) has been reviewed in TLS?  If not I think it
>proves my point about privilege.
>
>Higher Education For All,
>
>Geraldine
>
>
>