To leave the literary world as Rosemary did was in her case a brave choice but not at all unusual in an artistic context. Others took the same option in different ways in the years I recall often vanishing without trace. Many took their own lives or took to drink or drugs in my Dublin years or lost their sanity. The literary world paid them scant attention unless they were big names who already had garnered media attention.

David is indeed correct on there being money in poetry at the level many operate on various gravy trains on these islands. Barn conversion "Marxists" live far from the masses they claim to lose sleep about in the early hours.

One is either part of "The In Crowd" or simply left outside it. There is no sign of change one hundred years after World War One. If the writers who died futile deaths in that fiasco returned they would be amazed at how close we are to their worlds.


I learned of Rosemary's passing with sadness and may she rest in peace. Sleep softly Rosemary and may nothing nor nobody disturb thee.


Sean





-----Original Message-----
From: [log in to unmask]
To: BRITISH-IRISH-POETS <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Fri, 9 May 2014 12:12
Subject: Re: Rosemary Tonks

One of the ways I could answer now that perennial but ever more insistent question "What's gone wrong with poetry?" is that it has been taken over by 'ordinary' people, by the self-declared 'sane'.
 Anarchists with mortgages. The calculating, predatory mediocre inhabitants of 'our' cutsey village. Or I could say it has been absorbed into managerial culture, surprisingly, swiftly and effectively. In the Nineties I used like saying things 'I find comfort in the ramshackle, third world economy of poetry' (well, I did use to drink a lot then). But I had also thought they'd never privatise British Rail. It's still common for people to say there's no money in poetry but unfortunately there is now. For the right, structured kind of persons. There is a rumour the Muse has been seen hanging around with a Business Plan. I blame The People from Personnel. Mad, madness, eh, someone ought to write a play about it. One with a lot of weather.


On 9 May 2014 13:39, Peter Riley <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
Well, there's voluntary mad and involuntary mad. Most of the mad poets were type (a). There's also the kind of mad that Nigel Farage is, which is a kind of incurable stupidity. Some of the poets were that too, rather more flamboyantly. And of course there are the poets who are mad (in their poems) because Foucault says sanity is to blame for the whole thing. 
Pr







On 9 May 2014, at 12:56, David Bircumshaw wrote:

Some of this is terribly unfair on ordinary people. Most of them are quite quite mad too. :)


On 8 May 2014 21:14, Mark Weiss <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
I'm sympathetic to what you're saying, Peter. But I'm only a part-time loony.

-----Original Message-----
>From: Peter Riley <[log in to unmask]>
>Sent: May 8, 2014 4:10 PM
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: Re: Rosemary Tonks
>
>Statistically you're probably right, Mark, but it's the way this
>madness comes at you when you get involved, and the more "innovative"
>the scene the more madness there is (until recently when innovative
>suddenly became respectable). The number of times I've found myself
>thinking "How the hell did i get involved with this bunch of loonies?"
>
>Thing is, I'm a quite ordinary sort of person who happens to be
>interested in some of the more highly-wrought kinds of contemporary
>poetry and don't expect because of that to have to deal with craziness
>or, worse still, programmatic bad behaviour...  There are still poets
>around who think that outrageousness perversity self-destruction and
>even aggressive violence are integral to artistic purpose. Surely an
>inheritance from the 1890s, reinforced in the 1960s. The 1960s is what
>Rosemary Tonks fled from, in a very 1960s way.
>
>Peter
>
>
>On 8 May 2014, at 18:03, Mark Weiss wrote:
>
>I meant political ambition on the part of politicians, who are often
>mad as hatters.
>
>I'm aware of the research, so called about poets and manic-depression,
>tho I don't buy it. May be true, but it's terrible research. I don't
>think that the first or second generation modernists were
>significantly more prone to madness than the population at large, tho
>they're a hell of a lot more communicative about whatever
>peculiarities they possess. Or are possessed by.
>
>-----Original Message-----
>> From: Peter Riley <[log in to unmask]>
>> Sent: May 8, 2014 12:46 PM
>> To: [log in to unmask]
>> Subject: Re: Rosemary Tonks
>>
>> I was thinking mainly of early-mid C20 when "innovative" or
>> "pioneering" writers were on their own or at best supported by small
>> coteries or, as women, fighting dismissive prejudice (which continued
>> at least to the 1980s). There's no doubt that the majority of
>> "innovative" young poets now, men or women,  are well-trained career
>> successes and perfectly well behaved. Political worry is of course
>> part of the job description.
>> Pr
>>
>> On 8 May 2014, at 16:44, Mark Weiss wrote:
>>
>> I worry more about the correlation between political ambition and
>> "sdp."
>>
>> I doubt that the correlation is stronger than with unadventurous
>> poets, or with farmers, say.
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>>> From: Peter Riley <[log in to unmask]>
>>> Sent: May 8, 2014 10:06 AM
>>> To: [log in to unmask]
>>> Subject: Re: Rosemary Tonks
>>>
>>> I'm glad I was (to some extent) wrong about the lack of interest. The
>>> problem with Tonks is simple: you can't get at the poems because she
>>> refused to let the books be reprinted. There are a few on-line,
>>> presumably without permission, and a site called PoemHunter claims to
>>> have a lot, though you can't actually read any of them, at the moment
>>> anyway. We shall see what the family or heirs will allow, no doubt.
>>>
>>> It occurs to me to think at this point: Don't you sometimes worry
>>> about the apparent correlation between verbally adventurous poetry
>>> and
>>> "severely disturbed personalities"?
>>>
>>> pr
>>>
>>>
>>> On 8 May 2014, at 10:59, Tony Frazer wrote:
>>>
>>> I saw this too. I hadn’t realised, until I saw it, how far Neil had
>>> got in tracking her down. I tried myself a few years ago through the
>>> usual channels of ex-publishers and agents but drew a blank. I still
>>> have her 2 volumes from the 60s and think very highly of them; I’ve
>>> not read her novels, of which there were 6 or 7, and they seem to
>>> have
>>> dropped out of existence as well. It would be good at least to have a
>>> new compilation of her poems, including perhaps uncollected work from
>>> magazines. Perhaps Bloodaxe will come to the rescue.
>>>
>>> Tony
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On 8 May 2014, at 09:48, Peter Riley <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Rosemary Tonks has died, obituary by Neil Astley in yesterday's
>>>> Guardian.  No new revelations or hopes of public redress, but some
>>>> interesting biography and family connections. There could be a
>>>> thesis on C20 women who abandoned poetry in something like horror of
>>>> its irresponsibility.
>>>>
>>>> I also get the feeling, perhaps wrongly, that nobody's much
>>>> bothered.  There was a flurry of excitement about RT in these
>>>> circles some twenty years ago, but it took Neil Astley to follow up
>>>> and attempt to do something.
>>>>
>>>> pr



--




--
David Joseph Bircumshaw
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