"9. In 1967, Penguin published The Mersey Sound, with three Pop poets – Henri, McGough, Patten. It sold a million copies. This was the perfect Pop book. Teenagers read it. It was the culmination of something probably 5 to 8 years old by then. It was a forgettable book. Pop culture is immediate, cutaneous, once-only. If you think about it, or discuss it reflexively, you destroy it. Because it evaporates, it is hard for a person to fix the history of it. I think that what Evans says about it is very bad history. But also – this kind of poetry does not sustain discussion between intelligent people, and that is what we are going to do, we must do it willy-nilly."

It was certainly not 'a forgettable book', it was very memorable, people are remembering it all the time. His comment about it being the culmination of something 5 to 8 years old, while not wrong in essence, might give the wrong impression - the engagement of some poets with popular culture from the late 50's through the 60's was from the middle, the young student middle class, but it was sporadic, and it depends on what 'pop' culture you are talking about. Modern Jazz was not 'pop'. I would say that the middle class student interest in 'pop' never flowered until the mid 60's, following the Beatles etc. Then this coincided with a movement from below, working class kids into pop who through the mid-60's cultural explosion found themselves responding positively to that, and helping move pop into 'rock' etc. - that brief but important dismantling of class barriers that occurred, and remember when we are talking about pop as pop we are talking about class.

I also think it is simplistic, especially in this debate,  to define pop culture as 'immediate, cutaneous, once-only' and the thing has been talked about for decades without being destroyed - I think it's called postmodernism.

It is also worth remembering that Duncan's definition of 'pop poetry' is rather wider than most peoples' - he calls Duffy and Armitage and the like 'pop poets'.

Cheers

Tim