Non university students face a vacuum of sorts in less populated areas. But the Swindon model is a way forward if varied regarding who is invited to read. A real danger is "the usual suspects" who seem to be on an "Never ending" tour in Bob Dylan terms. They are perennials at annual festivals and readings all over these islands. This indeed is at the core of the debate on economics in poetry. Many superb contributions covering vital matters seldom aired.
The British/American divide is seldom raised and full credit to David B and Peter R for shedding light on it. We still live in the shadow of Yalta where American hardball pushed Britain into a minor role. Churchill's concessions belying his Cold War bluster gave the dollar a world it still dominates. This in the culture of artistic endeavour indeed has implications regarding language as well as financial power. In an Irish context American academic institutions wield serious power with regard than a lot more than academic posts. All empires demand from smaller nations with weak air defences total submission.
There was of course harmony between Pound's valuation of Browning and others in a literary context. Williams for all his virtues had a very clear agenda to impose a dialect rooted in American English upon his peers. In more modern times a recent reading online of Charles Bernstein's recent work impressed me. Charles has I humbly suggest has hit a blend of poetry I can accept and recommend. There is humour and levity but also self depreciation which I admire in "My Way" and "Girly Man" and "Recalculating". It is poetry one could suggest to a young poet as readable and he is "known".
Verily the moon winked!
-----Original Message-----
From:
[log in to unmask] <
[log in to unmask]>
To: BRITISH-IRISH-POETS <
[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Mon, Aug 17, 2015 02:14 PM
Subject: Re: Poetry On Trial: 2. “Poetry and Tribalism” by Jon Stone
That's an interesting thread (the Chris Emery one from 2008)
I suppose one
thing that's changed is that much higher proportions of kids attend uni than was
the case in the 1960s. Same in the US. It's no longer so easy to clearly
separate "elitist" academic institutions from grassroots activity. Some sort of
university presence exists within most large conurbations and is likely to be a
focus for enquiring people meeting each other.
A specific answer, of sorts,
to Emery's reasonable 2008 question was Chris Goode's anthology Better than
Language. I'm hoping the forthcoming Out of Everywhere 2 will answer it a lot
more.
It's not really clear if the sociological vector still exists by
which a smart non-uni-acculturated kid would be likely to come enthusiastically
or usefully into contact with the historical Av-G tradition without passing
through a university portal. Here in Swindon we occasionally have an alt-poet
giving a reading or a workshop, but neither these guests nor their amiably
puzzled audience have a particularly youthful demographic.
It's a temptation
to conclude that the lively counterculture debates of the sixties now take
place, if they do at all, inside uni classrooms, - I mean when they're not
virtual debates on facebook. I'd very much like to hear of organized
counterexamples. ( I have a feeling that anything we have heard of is likely to
be not at the growing tip of culture. )
There is , of course, lots of
non-standard poetic activity outside the academy, there always will be, but
without organization it isn't really a culture, just individuals of various ages
with tenuous friendship connections. That isn't a system that easily makes
contact with new poets, thouigh I hope it happens sometimes. But anyway
discipleship isn't the important thing. I don't want young poets to be curators;
not most of them, anyway. The important thing is not they they meet the
tradition, but that they meet each other. The shared concerns, conceptions,
language and (not least) ignorance; these are what make a new poetry possible.
