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I think this connection makes sense with regard to Watts’s piece. And the irony of an Oxbridge education which Drew refers to in McNIsh’s case being put at the service of a dumbing down of language has parallels in the whole Brexit debate and is eerily reminiscent of Gove’s dismissal of the economists’ forecasts - ‘we’ve had enough of experts’. The Catalan Independence movement (with its racist and genetic theories lurking not very far in the background) has evident parallels with Brexit - see Farage’s hearty endorsement, but also the support of writers such as Colm Toibin, propagandising for Puigdement in the Guardian and LRB, and a raft of academics like Terry Eagleton and Tariq Ali who perhaps think they’re taking the just side in a replay of the Spanish Civil War. This doesn’t mean McNish would share the politics of Trump or Brexit - which she may well hate - but Watts’ diagnosis of the way the pretence of authenticity and honesty makes this overbearing and populist appeal through social media is worth considering. Jamie > On 27 Jan 2018, at 16:29, Hampson, R <[log in to unmask]> wrote: > > Doesn't Rebecca Watts raise a larger issue than that binary - namely, the phenomenon of populism? > > Since New Labour there has been a knee-jerk 'anti-elitism' which has been very selective in terms of which elites it attacks: not the Windsors and the aristocracy, not the wealthy and the oligarchs, not even elite sportspeople ... but the educated (unless they went to Eton), the expert ... > > McNish's reply below is disappointing: that snide reference to 'high-register vocabulary' seems to me to confirm part of Watts's argument. Shouldn't poets be interested in the resources of language? At the same time, the use of 'high-register' is itself interesting: isn't it precisely an instance of the 'high-register vocabulary' for which Watts is being attacked. > > > Robert > From: British & Irish poets <[log in to unmask]> on behalf of Jamie McKendrick <[log in to unmask]> > Sent: 27 January 2018 14:28:11 > To: [log in to unmask] > Subject: Re: Rebecca Watts > > David, my point wasn’t that PNR or Carcanet is dedicated to mainstream - it’s a poetry publisher with a wider spread of styles than most from Raworth to Hannah - nor did I mean that it shouldn’t be attacking its own. Almost the opposite. Tim’s view is that this ‘popular’ style is favoured by the mainstream, my view is that he’d find among the mainstream many who oppose it no less strongly than he does. > Once again, a large part of the problem is lumping together a variety of styles and perspectives under this crude binary of mainstream/avantgarde and then expecting writers to keep to these categories which they may well have no interest in or loyalty to. > It hardly needs saying that anyone is free to criticise what they want. > Jamie > > > > > On 27 Jan 2018, at 14:10, David Lace <[log in to unmask]> wrote: > > > > Good point Jamie. In fact much of PN Review (when I used to read it) consisted of fairly mainstream or accessible poetry (i.e. not too avantgarde). So it really shouldn’t be knocking other mainstream poetry. > > > > By the way, the editor of the magazine, Michael Schmidt, ran Carcanet press at one time which published the debut poetry collection of a Sophie Hannah—a populist mainstream poet in the early 90s. She later went on to write novels. I read somewhere that Schmidt knew her father when they worked at the same university in Manchester. She was also a student in the English department that Schmidt taught at. > > > > > > > > > > > > > > ———————————-original message——————————— > > > > Jamie McKendrick wrote: > > > > Tim, I’m removing the sock for your ‘to conform to mainstream expectations’ remark, as it qualifies for my ‘nonsensical’ criteria for sock-removal. I’m sure you could find numerous writers who you’d place in that category that feel at least as passionately averse to the phenomenon as you do. Watts herself I’m sure you’d place there and it’s her who’s speaking out about it. > > It may seem a small point but as I mentioned on the other parallel thread it’s not the T.S.Eliot prize but the Ted Hughes Prize which I believe was created to give a bit of profile to mixed media poetry. People are still entitled to question it whatever prize it wins. > > Jamie