Oh.
Why is it that 'old folk' are doing something legitimate when they tell each
other things about their lives and heritage by singing communally, but when
poets try to build a campfire to sit around and tell each other things about
their lives and heritage by partly remembering past events it's
I am a poet of sorts and I hope one day to be an old folk of sorts. From where
should I collect my remembrance pass and at what age may I do so?
This is gross and specious and the implied insistence on invisibility as the
poet's benchmark of propriety is baffling and irresponsible.
C
PS Stop press: "Glitter speaks of regret". It's like Christmas all over
again.
[log in to unmask] (Peter Riley) wrote:
>Can somebody please explain what this is or was and its importance/interest.
>Perplexed of Sheffield
It was a gathering of about 15 poets who read their poetry to each other in
a stone cottage on a fellside (property of Barry MacSweeney's mother) at
the top of Allendale, in, when was that? 1967? for three or four days. A
lot of time was also spent in the Allenheads pub and roaming the shattered
landscape.
It wasn't important. It wasn't interesting. Well it might have seemed
either at the time but it's neither now. I can't remember anything about
it worth telling. Did Jeremy Prynne read aloud? Yes he did. What does it
matter? He also got blind drunk. What does that matter?
My only clinging and endearing memory of Sparty Lea is of John Temple
playing the piano in the Allenheads pub for community singing. Now that WAS
something worth remembering. All the old folk of the village singing their
heads off while John vamped away, having very politely ousted from her seat
a village dame whose playing was minimalist... What did they sing? I
guess it was things like Down at the Old Bull and Bush... but also some
north-east numbers I think, maybe "Come ye not from Newcastle" or, is there
one called "Geordie Boy?" Perhaps John himself could be more informative
on this repertoire. And so the evening passed in choral merriment while
the foreigner-poets looked on from the area of the bar, smiling benignly
or maybe weeping into their brown ales for the loss of communal feeling in
places like Cambridge....
Actually you can have all your experimental poetry for a thing like that,
you can have it and stuff it whever it belongs.
/PR
------------------------------------------------
Chris Goode
Director, _signal to noise_
24 Newport Road
London E10 6PJ
U.K.
+44 181 556 4492
[log in to unmask]
"Yes, my real name is Jordan. I just thought that Taylor would bring out the
color of my eyes." - Taylor Hanson
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