Kent,as someone who lived in the UK during the 70s, it does sound a bit too simple to put it all into a Cambridge hopper — as Robert points out, London had a core (at times inimical & mostly rival) of poets, though the crisscross was major too, and increased once the early “London group” began to disseminate across the country & beyond. Always tough, if not impossible to fix groups to locations & try to define their poetics/ideologies that way though it can be a useful shorthand. The lay of the land is finally always more complicated than we can draw it — the map is always less than the territory in time.Back in the late 70s I wrote an intro to what was the first anthology of “experimental / avant” poetry in the UK which Paul Buck & I brought out — in France as no-one in the UK or in the US wanted to touch the thing with a ten-foot pole. Will try to locate that text & quote some of it here.Pierre____________________________________________
The poet: always in partibus infidelium -- Paul Celan
____________________________________________
Pierre Joriscell (USA): 518 225 7123____________________________________________
On Aug 8, 2016, at 4:22 PM, Kent Johnson <[log in to unmask]> wrote:Thanks, Robert,
Yes, I'm aware that many of the poets listed don't reside in Cambridge. The point of the term (and some here in U.S. use it in this coded, relational way, for heuristic-handle purposes, I guess) is that there is a set of younger writers whose poetics (and poetic-politics, if there is any difference) are indebted, in various ways, directly or indirectly, to Prynne and Raworth, say.
Not so different from how we sometimes use the term "post-Language" here, to very generally frame a set of practices that can be traced back to Langpo. (Not that Prynne or Raworth are Language poets! Those differences would be another story...)
Kent
>>> "Hampson, R" <[log in to unmask]> 08/08/16 9:00 AM >>>Dear Kent,Tim’s email prompted me to find this.I note your careful framing (‘I’ve heard some people call this Brit formation the New Cambridge School’), but l am interested in the names cited and the blurring of the map of UK practice that is involved in this appropriation of a range of UK practice by Cambridge (which was one of the problems with the Chicago Review issue you mentioned).To go back to that list:Andrea Brady, Chris Goode, Marianne Morris, Peter Manson, Emily Critchley, Stuart Calton, Neil Pattison, Jeremy Hardingham, Jow Lindsay, Michael Kindellan, Matt Ffytche, Tom Jones, Jeff Hilson, Sean Bonney, Tim Atkins, Sophie Robinson, Frances Kruk, and Jonty Tiplady.
Jeff Hilson and Sean Bonney are an older generation with roots in King’s College, London, and the London poetry world. Tim Atkins I would also associate with London.
Sophie Robinson and Frances Kruk are both graduates of the Poetic Practice programme at Royal Holloway.
There is a teasing out of London, Essex, Sussex, Kent traditions still to be done – and, as Tim says and Geraldine’s Monk’s CUSP shows, there are other groupings outside the south-east.
I am conscious this doesn’t engage with the larger issue of the politics of ‘innovative’ poetry and the shift to the academy.
Yours,
Robert
From: British & Irish poets [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Kent Johnson
Sent: 07 August 2016 22:31
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: a bit of researchI wrote this some years back when I was writing for the now-defunct collective blog Digital Emunction, whose contents, for whatever reason, appear to have been deep-sixed by the former editor. The piece received quite a bit of interest when it appeared (over 100 comments at the blog, as I recall), and was linked to by various other venues. It seems it might be in relevant relation to the thread, seeing as that the discussion quickly moved from a question about Dylan Thomas out into wider ranging talk about British schools and tendencies. Thus thought I'd copy from my files and share, though the highlighted links no longer work. Kent
I’ve been having some exchange the past couple months with Keston Sutherland, the brilliant young UK poet. We’re working on something together and chatting about this and that in the process.
Some critics, both here in U.S. and in UK, have been proposing Sutherland’s long poem "Hot White Andy" (now published in book form) as one of the ground-breaking works of the past decades. His new work is Stress Position, also just published.
You can see him performing (it’s quite remarkable, trust me) these works here and here.
One thing that’s come up in our correspondence, though more in a passing fashion, is the matter of "Conceptual poetry" and Flarf. In some relation to the latter and its poetic/ideological antecedents there is this by Sutherland, published in 2004, the same year I met him for first time at a CCCP conference over in Cambridge. The article doesn’t directly mention Flarf, as its composition predates by a bit Kasey Mohammad’s five minutes with the BBC (at which point the collective decided its Googling was no longer mere frolic and jape, and turned its coordinated energies towards an earnest petition campaign for inclusion in Poets & Writers [successful, with photo] and The Norton Anthology of Poetry [not quite yet]).
Well, this post is not about Flarf, and I don’t know how or why I got sidetracked onto those silly rails yet once again! I suppose it seems almost gratuitous, the diversion; I apologize, if it does. (And for an example of Sutherland’s critical writing on subjects of more import and weight, the reader may see his "Marx in Jargon," in issue 1 of World Picture Journal.)
As I had started to say, then, Sutherland is certainly one of the prominent figures in a constellation of perfectly exciting UK poets writing "in wake of" the Cambridge-based greats J. H. Prynne and Tom Raworth– who could be seen, in their two presences, genealogically speaking, as somewhat to their later generation what Language poetry as a "tradition" is to the "most advanced sector" of the younger U.S. "post-avant."
I’ve heard some people call this Brit formation the New Cambridge School, though this is not quite apt (maybe less apt a name than the New Chicago School!), as most of these younger writers are located quite elsewhere: London, Scotland, Surrey, Brighton (this last where much of the most important action now is), and there are certainly differences, personal and poetical, that those more in the know would note. But there can be no doubt that this grouping represents a "tendency" of avant thought (thick and sophisticated, in the Adornean sense) and composition (tough and resistant, in the Adornean sense, too) that is having an increasing impact on poetry in the UK. Let us call it, for our Yank purposes, the New British School.
Among its most visible "members," along with Sutherland (and here we begin, as such lists must, to leave people out who shouldn’t be), are the following:
Andrea Brady, Chris Goode, Marianne Morris, Peter Manson, Emily Critchley, Stuart Calton, Neil Pattison, Jeremy Hardingham, Jow Lindsay, Michael Kindellan, Matt Ffytche, Tom Jones, Jeff Hilson, Sean Bonney, Tim Atkins, Sophie Robinson, Frances Kruk, and Jonty Tiplady. Justin Katko and Ryan Dobran just this week moved back home from the US and will no doubt help fan the fires.
Poets a bit older (though more in the sense that James Schuyler was older than John Ashbery) include Ian Patterson, John Wilkinson (presently in U.S.), cris cheek (ditto), Drew Milne, Alan Halsey, Simon Jarvis (with Sutherland one of the major critical voices of the group), Rod Mengham, Andrew Duncan, and Kevin Nolan (whom Sutherland and others consider perhaps the unsung great writer of the new UK poetry).
And younger poets in their early 20s, too, just starting out but already involved in the scenes and getting noticed: Josh Stanley, Luke Roberts, Tim Thornton, Mike Wallace-Hadrill, Francesca Lisette…
Now, there is something I wanted to say here– I believe I mentioned the fact at Silliman’s blog a month or so back, but it’s important enough to mention again: About two years ago, Chicago Review came out with a special issue on "New British Poetry," edited by Sam Ladkin and Robin Purves. The four poets featured were Brady, Goode, Manson, and Sutherland. Provocative, seriously argued essays by Ladkin/Purvis and John Wilkinson accompanied, along with fifteen reviews of newly published UK collections. The issue was, I think fair to say, a stunner, for the work presented by these four poets was really quite unlike anything being undertaken on this side of the pond (one of my favorite clichés), and the critical material presenting the large portfolio made claims for the poetry’s singularity and significance that really couldn’t be ignored.
But ignored here it flat out was. In fact, to the best of my knowledge, in the twenty-four or so months since this issue of CR appeared, not a single substantial mention has been made in any journal or at any blog (and there are a few of them!) associated with U.S. "post-avant" circles. Here was strikingly strange, little-known work which, in the ample sense of things, had deep relation and relevance to the history, poetics, theory, and politics of the more radical sections of U.S. avant writing. Indeed, the forceful claims of the framing essays argued, in part, precisely this. But to little avail, it seems.
I think there’s a fairly simple explanation for that somewhat deafening silence. It’s that the New British Poetry shows itself, as collective phenomenon, to be in the main more autonomous, sophisticated, provocative, various, ambitious, and politically aggressive than most work out of the U.S. "post-avant," which has for greater part become (does anyone still doubt it?) tightly tethered in faster and ever-closer circuit to a mysterious, sacred Pole of professional ambition and well-mannered protocol.
Forgive the enthusiasms of my metaphor, but the point is perfectly straight up. And I don’t mean this "national" difference is just in the poetic production proper. In their critical activity, too, Marx and Frankfurt School-inflected to a vengeance as it often is, these younger British poets appear, by and large, to be more assertive, serious, learned, and productive than their Yank cousins. Over here, if with some noble exceptions, younger innovative poets seem to be following the lead of their old-guard Language forebears, who have–now that a tenure-driven cottage industry has taken up the "theory" side of things–pretty much given up (blogging, self-canonizing memoir, or occasional reviewing doesn’t count) on sustained, hard-edged cultural critique as communal function.
And here’s the rub: A fair amount of the critique offered by these New British poets has been subtly or openly directed at the Language poets and their U.S. progeny. Following the lead of Prynne’s legendary (and never-spoken-of-in-these-parts) assault on Language poetry, "Letter to Steve McCaffery," the analysis has often been leveled at our complacency, at the decided drift towards academic accommodation and careerism, at the sloughing off of the premise of poetic praxis as social and institutional critique, at the rapid slide of our "post-avant" poetry towards a self-satisfied, formalist, belletristic ennui. Thus, the silence, I’d propose, at least in some quarters, is borne forward by a good measure of collective tacit agreement. In poetry, no less than around the English Department water cooler, resentment can breed passive-aggressive disregard.
But things change, of course. No question they will. Actually, they are! Young poets here interested in recovering poetic practice and community as vehicles of more vigorous cultural investigation and resistance are starting to pay attention and to form links with their peers over there. Collaborations and binational publishing projects (see my post on Hot Gun!) are beginning to take shape. I’ve even heard of a couple of U.S. study groups devoted to writings out of this New British School.
The sense is getting out, that is, that we’ve assumed for too long we’re the ones on top, or out front, with things to teach others. Now the more astute Yank poets have begun to see that we are the ones to have lagged behind, that there are some topical things to learn and remember. And that the Brits are calling back to us, with a portion of the news.
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