Coming in on the back comments about Those Who Reach Out, and specifically
of Martin's comments on Halsey / Robin Hood : dunno what was said on the
Buffalo list, but ARHB was one of the first books to get a mention on this
list - briefly, but favourably - back when. Check the archives... I hope
Alan does get well-recieved in the States, he's one of the Reliable
People, as poet and bookseller he always delivers. I liked Martin's recent
interview with him in Colorado Review - and of course magazines are yet
another instance of a way of getting US visibility: in recent years
several US mags have run chunks of britpo, in a way which would be almost
inconceivable over here.
In fact, Pierre hit it in nice understated form when he referred to
"British self-sufficiency". The general cultural contempt for non-Britain
is still, I rekn, the most significant contributor to "our" insularity.
All our public bodies have it. At a parliamentary level, _europe_ is still
the concern of the _foreign affairs committee_ - and this kind of cultural
assumption acts at every level. One britpo recently sent me a short
biobibliography in which they noted that they'd "worked abroad" - place(s)
unspecified - as if that were remarkable, and perhaps in its way it was...
Which is why its necessary to go read poetry in Brno, to send poems to
Genci Mucollari in Tirane, as well as head west - as always, not for what
goes out, but for what comes back.
Must be friday, surely.
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Richard Caddel
Durham University Library, Stockton Rd., Durham DH1 3LY, UK
E-mail: R.I.Caddel @ durham.ac.uk
Phone: +44 (0)191 374 3044 Fax: +44 (0)191 374 7481
WWW: http://www.dur.ac.uk/~dul0ric
"Words! Pens are too light. Take a chisel to write."
- Basil Bunting
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