I came to contemporary British and Irish poetry fairly recently. What I knew before say 20 years ago was some of the mainstream, and I didn't care much for what I read. I did think that that's all there was. A bunch of lucky accidents changed that. Still a lot to learn, but my own attitude has been for the most part delight. Hell, I even have a British publisher. Thanks, Tony.

There are real differences between the two poetries, some of them stemming from differences in education (in the broadest sense)--the contexts are very different. Beyond that, the rhythms of the two dialect areas are pretty distinct, and they often inform the music. But whatever one calls it, the Brit/Irish mainstream has been very welcoming.

-----Original Message-----
From: Tim Allen <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Oct 20, 2016 10:50 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Britain vs. U.S. Poetry war

It was in a post of yours a some months back, re 'novelty' and American poetry. 

I don't know enough about it to know if you are right about American attitudes to British poetry in general, it's just that I have not seen it myself. To my mind quite a few avant Americans have always been pretty enthusiastic about avant Brits, they have certainly given the sort of notice and attention to poets such as O'Sullivan and Raworth that were never forthcoming here in their homeland, apart from the then small Brit avant community etc.

I've always been interested in the differences between the Americans and the Brits but never from any sense of national ownership - I don't give two figs where anybody comes from.

I would also have thought that, purely for reasons of access and availability, a while back it was a lot easier for us to pick up on American poets than for them to pick up on ours.

Cheers

Tim

    

On 20 Oct 2016, at 14:18, Peter Riley wrote:

Curiously, I don't remember saying anything like that. I thought I was talking about American poets' attitudes to British poetry, conventional or innovative, which with exceptions I have found consistently negative for the last 40 years. This was very noticeable in the running of the Cambridge Conference of Contemporary Poetry for instance. Our enthusiasm for the new American poetry knew no bounds but was clearly not reciprocated.

I suggest we not start a discussion as to whether the "experimental" can claim the "left field" as its own.