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Fair enough - but David it was you who brought up the Edwardian connection with the "current British poetry...scene". There are a great many more interesting things for all of us to contemplate than that, though I don't see why it should be alien to a list such as this.
The topic of Creative Writing's expansion in universities here, on the US model, isn't exactly engrossing either. I'm not sure, though, that the descriptor "middle-class" helps much in understanding it, or just says the obvious: teaching is traditionally described as a middle-class activity. Plus it solves the money problem. It doesn't mean that it can't have value.
   As a (very) part-time teacher, I prefer to teach literature rather than writing, but I don't see the latter option as morally tainted. What worries me most about it is the potentially exclusionary effect of these degrees - that it becomes even harder to publish for those outside this institutional loop - with editorially well-connected poets recommending their graduates. (Again I don't see those recommendations as tainted - but quite a natural attempt to help young poets whose work the poet/teachers find promising.) But you'd hope that poetry would fight free of institutional governance. If this is what's meant by "middle-class" I wouldn't entirely disagree.
 I fear Mark's right that these kind of degrees "will become the entry ticket". It may even already be the case.
Jamie

----- Original Message -----

From: David Bircumshaw

To: [log in to unmask]

Sent: Tuesday, July 27, 2010 3:16 PM

Subject: Re: Never such innocents again

Yes, Mark, it has been very noticeable here in recent years how the universities are churning out would-be culture managers who are looking for, as you say, ' a comfortable middle class work life' out of anything they can claim to control, even bloody poetry. While the Creative Writing Empires are after everything: performance poetry, middle-class narrative realism, even the avant-garde, ersatz poetry springing up everywhere.

Here I've been happily reading side-by-side Isaac Bashevis Singer stories and David H.Stern's marvellous 'Jewish New Testament' ( 'When they saw how bold Kefa and Yochanan were, even though they were untrained am-ha'aretz .... all filled with the Ruach HaKodesh ... in the name of Yeshua from Natzeret') - marvellous stuff - and I've just got hold of Kirk, Raven and Schofield's 'The Presocratiic Philosophers' - which I haven't seen since it was republished in 1983 - and the LAST thing I want to do is talk about or even contemplate something as boring and unstimulating as current British poetry and (even worse) the British poetry scene.

 

 

On 27 July 2010 14:17, Mark Weiss <[log in to unmask] > wrote:

In the US the proliferation of writing programs has created the expectation, not of wealth, but of a comfortable middle class work life and cossetted retirement for poets. It's difficult to see teaching in these programs as a sideline--it's become part of the job description of most poets. Britain appears to be headed in the same direction.

I should point out that that ezpectation is often unrealistic, given the overproduction of MFAs. But never fear--within the decade PhDs in Creative Writing (a terrible phrase) will become the entry ticket.

Best,

Mark

At 08:57 AM 7/27/2010, you wrote:

David,

  Sort of shows why the term 'Edwardian Poetry' doesn't have much currency: 1901-1910 is such a short period that poets can be brusquely deemed either too old or too young to fit. The only book I found by googling the topic is Edward Millard's and even that uses a prior starting date of 1895  - and Edward Thomas, whom he includes, only began as a poet around 1914, though the earlier decade was formative I guess would be the argument. The poets Millard apparently concentrates on are Newbolt, Masefield, Hardy, Thomas, Housman, Davidson and Brooke. Doesn't look such a 'vaccuum' to me, and to speak personally I'd say at least Hardy and Thomas remain compellingly relevant and I'd think of Hardy as a great deal more "innovative" than many who'd call themselves that. ('National treasure' is such a slighting term - it looks down on both Hardy and those who revere him, though that may not have been your intention.)

   Anyway Millard's is not a grouping that I'd immediately associate with the "murky and mercenary". For that matter, without further enlightenment from yourself or a higher power, I wouldn't especially associate this description with contemporary poetry either. Apart from the laureateship with its royal associations and its increased pay for the last two incumbents, we're talking general obscurity and small earnings - and Duffy, if I remember, has donated her laureate fee to launch an annual prize. I'm not so blinkered that I can't see all kinds of crassnesses and cliques and jockeying for position within what you call the "world of professional poetry" but this accusation of the "mercenary", as well as various sub-Adornian mutterings about commodification elsewhere, always seem to me comically misplaced. Even the idea of the "professional" sounds like a misnomer, when the primary activity is so unlikely to earn anyone a living, or even a significant fraction of a living. As for sidelines, I may have reservations about the growth of the creative writing industry, but teaching is work, sometimes quite hard work, so I don't have any resentments on that score. Literary journalism, too, is usually very ill-paid. In other words, you'd have to be a completely daft to enter the unprofessional world of poetry with aspirations to make money. I don't imagine anything I've said here is news to you, which is why I can't understand your perspective.

Jamie

----- Original Message -----

From: David Bircumshaw

To: [log in to unmask]

Sent: Tuesday, July 27, 2010 5:53 AM

Subject: Re: Never such innocents again

Jamie

 

Hardy was a Victorian writing on into another century, he's a national treasure even if his poems creak like old country gates but though a hardy perennial he's hardly relevant to contemporary poetics, even if a lot of poets and readers hark and hanker back to him.

I'd like to migrate to another sentence now, as I'm weary of aspirates.

Lawrence's and Pound's very early poems (Ezra's 'stale cream puffs' which received friendly enough notices in the TLS and the very first issue of Poetry Review) weren't exactly representative of the period either, except in their weaknesses.

No, I don't write as if you were a member of the Bullingdon Club and plesae don't tempt me to :)

While I wouldn't dare an account of the murky and mercenary (I'm feeling highly alliteratively literary this morning) world of professional poetry. To my knowledge there isn't a sociology of contemporary British poetry written and I doubt, given the secretive nature of much of it, that it would be possible, without the benefit of a higher power, to do so.

On 26 July 2010 19:39, Jamie McKendrick <[log in to unmask] > wrote:

David,

  Because I'm too ignorant of most Edwardian poetry to offer a defence of it, I didn't. (Though I was glad to see someone did.) But there are surely some poets writing then, including Thomas Hardy, D.H.Lawrence and Ezra Pound (Personae, 1909) that shouldn't be beneath the regard of a list devoted to contemporary poetics?

   "As for British society", I don't see why you should presume I hadn't noticed the same things that you have, which is why I rather resent being addressed as if I'm a member of the Bullingdon Club myself.

   "As for poets, and the values they reflect," - that was the part I was once again asking about, but clearly you're under no obligation to expand on or explain your earlier remark, though I'm sure you could if you wanted to. My view remains that your Edwardian analogy regarding poetic practice is an irrelevant one, but I might have been persuaded otherwise.

Jamie

----- Original Message -----

From: David Bircumshaw

To: [log in to unmask]

Sent: Monday, July 26, 2010 6:46 PM

Subject: Re: Never such innocents again

Jamie

 

when people leap to the defence of Edwardian poetry on what is supposed to be a list devoted to innovative poetics it's hard to keep a straight face. As for British society, you may have noticed it's currently being run by the Bullingdon club. As for poets, and the values they reflect, I leave that to people's own observations.