 |
 |
Thank you, Philip, for your work on ModernPoetry.org <http://moderpoetry.org/> It was this website that drew me into reading British poetry more assiduously, which we in our enormous isolated land of the USA caught between thousands of miles of ocean don’t do past the modernists. And which then led me to living in Devon and writing long series of poems about the surrounding green and rainy world. Thanks for your continuing hard work and fair mindedness. Long may you rule in grandfatherly benevolence. Cheers, Jaime > On Mar 3, 2018, at 4:42 AM, Peter Philpott <[log in to unmask]> wrote: > > Dear Colleagues & Comrades > > Apologising for what will be some cross-posting, the length of the missive (and that I’m probably not going to defend at length the positions I take: life is short, art is long, talking about art even longer and longer): > > I have finally made some progress in my plan to make modernpoetry.org.uk <http://modernpoetry.org.uk/> a little more shipshape. I abandoned updating the site in 2011, due to pressure on time from grandchildcare – apart from maintaining the pages listing events in London. I am always astonished when I encounter people who have found, and still find, the site useful, and embarrassed at its present derelict condition. I will preserve the current pages for historical record, but gradually through this year put up fresh up-to-date pages also for much of this. Then probably/possibly leave it. It is really up to persons more in contact with the freshest live currents of innovative poetry to take over such a role, not me. > > Anyway – initial work has been done on the list of Links to British Innovative Poetry Sites. I have completely updated “Resources, lists and other foci of information”, “Online magazines, magazines online, e-publishers and other assemblages of writing” & “Writers' homepages, blogs etc”. If anyone is willing to cast an eye and make suggestions over this, I will back-channel a copy of these to you as a word file (or whatever format). This really needs to be a collaborative exercise. There is a vast amount more now going on than there was at the beginning of the decade, far more than one old bloke living outside London can grasp. I’d also appreciate people emphasising which websites they feel are really useful, important amazing or just bloody good in their own way. > > Into this activity come the questions this list interminably works on about the status of a poetry current in this country which feels itself separate from a poetry which has a greater access to what I’ll call the founts of publicity, canon-making & blardy-blah. A new phrase was introduced to me by Will Rowe, which posted notification of a “Non-Normative Poetry Bookfair” to be held at T Chances, 399 Tottenham High Road N17 6QN on April 21. I like “Non-Normative”. But I’d better give a more explicit sense of what poetry it is that modernpoetry.org.uk has involved itself with. I would operate on a basis of talking about poetic cultures and networks. A number of individuals in the 50s picking up on contemporary or recent European and American poets and poetries, leading to a more active movement which engaged very much with the 60s zeitgeist (“Bliss it was in that dawn to be alive / But to be young was very heaven”), to launch the lunatic and baggy enterprise of the British Poetry Revival, briefly linking loosely, but actually, “Liverpool Scene”, “Cambridge” and various post-Beat impulses with continuing rawer Poets Forum Workshop Modernism (and more . . .). It didn’t last, it couldn’t last – but it changed everything. New strands of DNA were inserted into the varietal range of English poetry. It is the presence of that DNA which distinguishes what is most commonly now called “British Innovative Poetry”, transmitted through social contact (to modify the metaphor into something more like a beneficial virus or bacterium). Connections can be traced, are often traced, from 50/60s to the present, through various groupings and poetic cultures. There’s also a kind of species-recognition – not always accurate (hey! We’re poets, we always get things wrong), but good enough, if one wants to establish a broad and non-exclusive, non-sectarian sense of current British Innovative Poetry. We can sniff each other’s pheromones (though some can only pick up a limited number, I believe there is a wide range). > > There is also work by others with shared evidence indicators to that of BIP poets, but these poets are genetically distinct: convergent evolution. They may well merge with our population as part of the change staking place now. What I’ve got in my list of poets’ websites etc is I realise what could be the basis for The Official List of Innovative Poets (which I shall never draw up!). I have included the websites etc of people because I feel in them (or aware through objective knowledge of their connections with others) the force of this originating impulse (played out over the decades). There may be some surprising names amongst the younger writers – this may be due to the fact I don’t not know them as well as more established writers – but I will have found evidence of their participation with BIP poets in BIP events. And I hope there will be surprising names amongst some older poets. Ron Geesin I discovered still alive & performing! (That should set my age-group into some excitement!) > > I’m conscious of a real wave of activity by younger poets, often performance-based. (Sharp intakes of breath I can hear). A lot that is really exciting is happening with a rebirth of this performed poetry, I hope resting it away from the sterility of Slam into more innovative, even Innovative, forms. Stuff that’s non-normative. And too of blends of poetry with art activities as performance or indeed artefacts/processes involving language. All good – potentially another great explosion of poetic genetic variety. This is bursting out now, and will change things. So it’s a good point to try and sum up this scene before it mutates and grows into something maybe quite different. Tragic if it doesn’t. > > Hence, to conclude and return to my real purpose. If you want to assist in drawing up a mapping of the present state of British Innovative Poetry to update modernpoetry.org.uk – let me know by whatever means, and I’ll involve you. I do need assistance, will ensure it is credited, indeed may well pass on the website to anyone who wants it after this project is completed. > > > Best wishes > > Peter Philpott > >