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Getting no work done today, thanks Britpo. Now here's a can of worms. thanks Jeffrey. For starters I never considered Henri, ever, as a mainstream poet, I considered him to be an avant entertainer, someone who took forms from the modernist and art world and filled them with lovely real content, made from the world around him. That is not 'mainstream'. His main influence on me was his saying that his poems had no beginning or middle or end. His poems were a type of mind-collage. As someone else said here, Roger is light verse, and only mainstream to the extent that light verse, especially the humorous, is an accepted part of the mainstream, and he is very popular anyway. Brian too was and is mainstream to the extent that his well structured whimsey and love poetry was popular. But this 'willingness to engage with local communities' - here goes... 90% of the time you only get to engage with local communities and schools etc when you get invited in, either by the places themselves or by some arts and/or community organisation. It doesn't just happen. And who gets invited in? Do I really need to answer this? Cheers Tim On 17 Jan 2018, at 13:40, Jeffrey Side wrote: > Jamie, yes ‘not talking down to people’ is how he came across to me too. I don’t know about Roger and Brian, but Adrian was very much involved in doing poetry readings in Liverpool and elsewhere up until he got ill. He did a lot of poetry readings at schools as well as giving talks. I think this sort of thing is what differentiates him (and other mainstream poets) from perhaps many avantgarde poets — the willingness to engage with local communities. Maybe I’m being unfair, and am speaking out of ignorance. Maybe there are avantgarde poets who do this sort of thing too.