PS It's not only me who makes mistakes with names. The tennis player is Christopher "Buster" Mottram, his father is Tony Mottram. (I should know this as I read his book on tennis as a twelve-year-old.)
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Tuesday, June 12, 2012 12:56 PM
PS
Jamie
the anthology is called 'A Century of Poetry Review' and edited by Fiona Sampson. I'm sure you know that really. It does have some 'names' in it, but the overall effect was a numbing dullness. Like everyone else, I've read anthologies I found lacking, but I'd be able to recall what I found wanting afterwards, all I can recall of this was struggling to keep awake on a train just outside Nottingham.
I have no idea when Mahon's poem was rejected - I first saw it referred to a short piece by John Lucas and I have seen it mentioned in PR itself too. Fyi I wasn't too taken by Eric Mottram's PR, altho' I haven't seen every edition he did, I mostly just like the Robin Fulton translations, I presume it was him you meant, not Tony 'Buster' Mottram the former tennis player who, as far as I kow, has never edited PR?
One other thing I did like about the Mottram PR was its size: small. It doesn't try to give an illusion of materiality. When did PR start looking like a coffee table production? Late 80s or early 90s?
On 12 June 2012 12:32, David Bircumshaw <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
No, Jamie, the question isn't hard to understand, unless you wish to be deliberately obtuse. The difficulty in phrasing comes from trying to describe the activities of a cultural bureaucracy.
Who is Tony Mottram? As for poems of 'lasting significance' I mean work which still has a cultural 'present'; it could be The Whitsun Weddings, Hughes' Crow, Mercian Hymns just as much as say Briggflats or Malcolm Mooney's Land.
On 12 June 2012 11:58, Jamie McKendrick <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
The question's hard to understand - "owe their existence in part" - no wonder it's got tangled up. The Arts Council since 1946 has funded a large number of poets, poetry magazines and presses - the latter from Bloodaxe to Barque. So maybe you ought to say what poetry produced since 1946, if any, you consider to be of "lasting significance".
I haven't read or seen the PR anthology. But if Mahon's 'A Disused Shed in Co. Wexford' was indeed rejected there, that would be down to the editor of that time, presumably Tony Mottram?
I also haven't ever seen a knitted poem - perhaps they look splendid, like an Alighieri Boetti or a Grayson Perry tapestry?
--
David Joseph Bircumshaw
"We are shallow, mababaw ang kaligayahan."
- F. Sionil José
Website and A Chide's Alphabet
http://www.staplednapkin.org.uk
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--
David Joseph Bircumshaw
"We are shallow, mababaw ang kaligayahan."
- F. Sionil José
Website and A Chide's Alphabet
http://www.staplednapkin.org.uk
The Animal Subsides http://www.arrowheadpress.co.uk/books/animal.html
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/david.bircumshaw
twitter: http://twitter.com/bucketshave
blog: http://groggydays.blogspot.com/