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Perhaps I should add some detail as to why I doubt that story about Morrison Smith and the bin. What now gets called 'Full disclosure'! I know Morrison slightly and did a few reviews for him when he edited the Sunday Independent way back. He never once leaned on me or tried to steer or adjust the reviews in any way. Then about 20 years ago, when he was already at some distance from the poetry world, we judged a poetry competition together. Our tastes diverged pretty radically but he read everything conscientiously and seemed to me capable of explaining his preferences clearly and unprejudicially.  I'm not speaking about the M & M Penguin anthology (published nearly 35 years ago) - the parlous omissions in which I'm sure have been amply covered here. 
   The link with the topic of Thomas and the Movement I suppose is that he wrote a book on the latter. I haven't read it - has anyone. Perhaps in it there is something about their reaction to Thomas?
Jamie
   


On 3 Aug 2016, at 11:29, GOODBY JOHN <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

Jamie, the Morrison article covers numerous other literary, historical and other responses to the Pendle trials. The lack of even a passing reference to Geraldine Monk's Interregnum can only be a case of sheer ignorance or calculated omission. It's a bit like having an article on cultural responses to the Jacobite invasion of 1745 which doesn't mention Scott's Waverley.

John


I can’t explain what certain writers have or haven’t read or choose to put into their articles – as with this one on the Pendle witches, I’m guessing not even about poetry – but I wouldn’t read too much into it. No disrespect intended but Morrison with a successful career as a prose writer, has for a long while moved away from poetry, or at least from any reviewing or commentary on it, so I’m not sure if he’s such a good choice to take as a contemporary indicator. If you’re both saying there’s some excellent poetry out there that isn’t being read, even by literary folk, then it’s a case of plus ca change. If you’re saying more of the good work is ignored from the avant-garde, then ditto, and I’d probably agree.
Jamie
 
 
From: Tim Allen
Sent: Tuesday, August 02, 2016 5:22 PM
Subject: Re: a bit ofresearch
 . But I am not neutral with regard to the conditions and situations of the relationship/non-relationship between innovative and mainstream (or whatever terms are preferred) - I am interested in them being explained. Things like John's perfect example about Morrison's ignorance (wilful or not) of Geraldine Monk have a cause, have a history, they didn't just happen out of nothing, unless we start applying quantum mechanics to poetry movements - perhaps we should.
 
Cheers
 
Tim
 
On 2 Aug 2016, at 16:31, Jamie McKendrick wrote:
A continuity between Movement and mainstream practices has been claimed emphatically and repetitively for some fifty years since Crozier put the case. I'm not convinced it was true then and with each passing decade the argument looks ever more tenuous and threadbare.
   I don't think we're going to agree about this, as nothing I've put forward, on the many occasions the question has surfaced on this list, has changed your view in the slightest. All I can say is that my position, if it can be called that, is not tantamount to claiming 'black is white' as you put it. It's based on having read over many years a number of poets with a fair amount of care.
   (On a personal level, I get fairly riled for it to be insistently assumed that my aesthetics are based on those of poets in whom I have minimal interest and for whom I feel very little affinity, but then, tempting as it is, it's not the job of writers to tell people how their work should be placed or read!)
Jamie



On 2 Aug 2016, at 15:01, Tim Allen <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

Yes I can sort of see what you say too. It's probably true up to a point, but beyond that point it gets more complex because, if I can use an analogy (don't like doing it but it seems appropriate here), the 'mainstreams' reactions to and differences with classic Movement poetics are more like the shades of difference within a single political party.