You don't get many of the 'middle-class snooty stiff-lipped in-charge type' around thee days, at least not in the circles I've encountered - these days it is very difficult to differentiate by listening to accents and such stuff, most of the young middle class look and sound the same as most other young people. But at the same time if you look into the backgrounds of young poets you'll find that these days around 8 out of 10 of them had middle class childhoods etc., - over the past 20 years there has been a shift away from the relative social mobility that I experienced when younger.

Cheers

Tim


On 2 Sep 2016, at 17:54, Peter Riley wrote:

Maybe not. I can only say that the majority of the successful (some big-scale) new young poets I come across up here or get to hear of (Kim Moore , Steve Ely, William Letford, Andrew McMillan... and a lot of others whose names I can't remember and didn't interest me) seem to be if not actual working-class (indeed I did use the term very loosely) very distant from the middle-class snooty stiff-lipped in-charge type which David mentioned. Maybe those who had local accents (which was all of them) gave me a distorted impression. 
P. 

On 2 Sep 2016, at 16:33, Tim Allen wrote:

How ever did you come to that conclusion Peter? It's not true. It's not even near the truth - I think you should have tried harder to 'make the distinction'.

Cheers

Tim A.

On 2 Sep 2016, at 15:30, Peter Riley wrote:

The tremendous outburst of young poets (some writing old poetry) in recent years has been dominated by working-class people insofar as you can make the distinction.