it doesn't even make sense to suppose that poetry can't be innovative or forward thinking just cos you've figured out how to use the internet. dominant modes of representations erode themselves, until they're gone.

Cheers,

luke

On 20 March 2018 at 12:55, Luke <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

There is no way Goldsmith can do it. I'm not saying he's not good enough, or not positioned well enough. There's no way "poetics "are going away, that poetry is going to dissolve like that, right?

Luke

On 3 March 2018 at 17:08, Jaime Robles <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

Very interesting, Sean.

Your mother’s taste in music re: Maria Callas is brilliant.

J

On Mar 3, 2018, at 3:13 AM, Sean Carey <00000758a731f3ca-dmarc-reques[log in to unmask]> wrote:

In an Irish context the first creative writing PHD course was started by Gerald Dawe & Brendan Kennelly at Trinity College, Dublin. No grants apply to taking this course to the best of my knowledge but I am open to correction? 

To do this course is a passport to making creative writing courses a career with posts available as writers in residence. Various Irish counties employ students from this course & it also is a help towards recognition. So one could end up employed by say Longford County Council for a spell & presses like Salmon become more interested. 

The course ethos would be conservative in a poetic sense & in the Patrick Kavanagh tradition. In a way perhaps too simple a pigeonhole as Kavanagh himself knew his Modernists unlike more insular Irish poetic strands. The Irish academic system has evolved of course since Kavanagh’s time which was a four university era. In decades past the American GI Bill provided third level education & many American writers came to Dublin. Some had Beat or Modernist links & a fairly open mode of poetics. Very few are now remembered & that also can apply to The White Stag WW2 writers. Both merit study & also homegrown Irish novelists such as Richard Power & Patrick Boyle. 

Indeed I doubt if the Gerald Dawe course gives any of the above any mind space or time. The aim there is to produce writers with easier texts to study & less hassle to teach. Even Louis McNiece I doubt gets anymore than lip service & Joyce is carefully invoked but avoided. Indeed Dawe himself may be retired & Brendan Kennelly is past seventy years of age or more. 

But the Dawe course is in serious terms a fast track route to becoming a name & helps one to make waves. The contrast between America & Britain & Ireland is stark as American academics exist within a specific strata. The big tent everyone is equal delusion does not apply in American education. On these islands we are more subtle in our politics & a loud brash writer is very rare in modern times. Where on our islands are a Charles Bukowski or Amiri Baraka? Odd bedfellows but their readers knew where they really stood on life’s stage. A case could be made for Barry MacSweeney & ‘Desire Lines’ is a mouth watering Shearsman publication. Indeed in recent times Harry Gilonis has really impressed me & I regret I paid him little attention in the past. I have never warmed to Sean Bonney’s poetry whom many claim wears the mantle of Tom Raworth.  

Often the anti American case is they are too loud & bad mannered & ‘ignorant’ as they lack reserve. In my own experience I never found that to be factual & the Canadians I met in Litland were far slyer operators. 

On muzak I am afraid I disagree as it is now the only music I enjoy & the story of how it came about is worth a glance. Ear problems make most music I used enjoy a case of noise & my mother was tone deaf. But she loved listening to Maria Callas & reading about her life. I still stay in tune with bands & singers I used enjoy but purely in a textual way. So apart from muzak full praise!

Cheers

sc

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On Friday, 2 March 2018, Jaime Robles <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

Well, that wasn’t the object of the email, Tim, and frankly I think the questions you pose below are unanswerable.

The object of the email was simply to address the continuing stated and implied belief that Creative Writing programs are part of an established (and conspiratorial?) academic (whatever that means?) system by giving some information about the American academic system, which is not likely known in the UK. There are also many people who make the same criticism about creative writing in US academia that is being made on the list. It’s a question about validity ultimately, but determining validity is based in entirely subjective views of an art form. I’m of the belief that any pursuit and expression of art is valid except Muzak.

The email was also meant to entertain.

On Mar 2, 2018, at 3:09 AM, Tim Allen <0000002899e7d020-dmarc-reques[log in to unmask]> wrote:

Thanks for such a full reply Jaime, the details are interesting. However, I've read it thoroughly and can't find anything that tells me if there is a difference between the writing of those who are either taking/took a Creative Writing course and those who have/do not, and likewise between the more experienced poets attached to academia and those who are not.