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Sorry - I forgot to add: I think that term 'liberal elite' needs unpacking. Is any kind of 'liberal' idea always already evidence of 'elitism'? And what does 'elitism' mean? Robert ________________________________ From: British & Irish poets <[log in to unmask]> on behalf of David Lace <[log in to unmask]> Sent: 27 January 2018 17:50:42 To: [log in to unmask] Subject: Re: Rebecca Watts Robert, a lot of it seems to be aimed at the "liberal elite" and not so much "academia". The the Poetry Foundation article mentions McNish being critical of that pretentious design program on Channel 4, rather than at academia. --------------original message---------------- Robert Hampson 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