Hi all,

ok this is the substance of the back-channel post I sent to a few 
listees last night. For what it's worth.

Again, this is just as it strikes me. There are several issues being 
toyed with.

1. The 'what is worth discussing publicly'  in the broadest sense 
question? Mostly differences of opinion as to that.  My sense would 
be that anything that anybody on the list considers appropriate to 
contemporary practices of poetry and poetics is on the agenda. But 
that needs to be put in the light of the fact that there are another 
couple of hundred people coming and going here too and if nobody 
agrees or wants to pick up a thread then fine. I don't find any 
evidence of 'party' lines on particular topics although I'm not so 
liberal that I can't see their skeletons. Chris Goode has made a good 
point about the amount of clashing activity over which no controls 
can be exercised for example in the case of proximate 'readings' and 
I think it's important that we don't write a if everybody on the list 
has shared histories let alone regional confluences.

However, there are circles of topics on any list I've subscribed to. 
Positions, variably stated and reapproached orbit around such topics. 
It's difficult to avoid. There's always the 'we've already discussed 
this, check the archives' factor and that can be a terrible 
invocation of closure for some as well as the only retort which will 
prevent others reaching for their delete button or setting up 
precipitate filters.

The problem will not easily go away as topics do tend to recur and 
contestable terms and issues tend to come around again and again. 
They cannot be resolved as there will always be somebody new joining 
who represents a difference of ethos, or opinion or . .

2. The problem, if there is one, is that conflict (on whatever topic) 
tends to generate more news than agreement. It grabs the headlines. I 
make only an observation in this respect.

3. brit-po is probably gendered about 80 + (? I might be 
underestimating this imbalance but imbalance there is) % posts male 
and so the majority of conflicts follow suit. This imbalance is more 
than amplified by editorial and curatorial interventionists 
throughout poetry in the UK let alone within the brit-po 
constituencies. This is hard to unpack and to quantify but at such 
times, as various people (many of whom here are wearing several long 
standing - and sometimes suffering to boot - hats that they 
inevitably feel close to) post more and on occasion lock horns (I 
*am* being playful here), there can be an agogness from lurkers 
(sometimes I'm one of those and sometimes I'm probably causing the 
mouths to drop open) that renders this an unduly intimidating space.

I don't think gender is key, but it's salutary that the bigger 
upflares 'tend' (on brit-po, although it's not alone in this by any 
means) to be between rival males (after all this is the season for 
all that  -  sorry:)).  Genderising  and gendered issues are quietly 
simmering on this list and  behaviours / responses / tones might be 
accordingly moderated on all sides from time to time in cognisance of 
these facts as to who is occupying the cyber-sofa most boorishly, 
perhaps in their ardour unaware that others are being forced to perch 
somewhat uncomfortably on the arms (or whatever). Modems at dawn on 
Crannock Chase almost appeals to me (but only because I'm too seldom 
up to see the daylight bloom).

Now I'm not being crass in such suggestions. I get stuck into curious 
fence offs in this case as much as any. Some are fun (such as that 
currently with a John Cayley), some can be more exasperating. I've 
experienced the dread of becoming drawn into a scrutiny that means I 
have to devote more time to an argument than I might have initially 
intended for example. I've said some stupid stuff and reacted with my 
knees rather than, even above, my head from time to time.

3. I'm leaving this blank in honour of Randolph Healey.

4.  I guess I now have co-ownership of this list as a hat. I've gotta 
say that I feel it to be a caretakership and a facillitatorship if 
it's any vessel. There could be curatorial interventions (but then 
any member can initiate them as well). I for another don't want this 
to be a 'moderated' list. It has something in common with venue 
curatorship. Luckily we haven't had the 'krupp' type phenomena (as on 
'poetry etc') just yet. Although 'Orlando' was a close call and we 
shouldn't be so complacent as to think we might not invoke such 
wrathful posters in future.

5. There is, as again with most lists, an active core and a lurking 
crowd of onlookers who come and go around the shadows at the edge of 
the light.  I'm not of a mind that this is anything to do with 
'democracy', other than in a more cyncical interpretation there are 
subtle manipulations of concensus and revisionist tendencies and 
false historians and those who would represent the disenfranchised 
and those who are perceived (rightly or wrongly) as holding the 
reigns [sic] of power. Splutter! Cough! I often find here a loose 
community of people who happen, by operating a lottery of defaults so 
copious as to have arrived at determinacy through 
overindeterminations, to have found themselves in the same bar or in 
a foyer far away and are busy trying to work out whether they want to 
really stay or not. It's a community of interests (although Lawrence 
will probably take me task for saying so) in an otherwise sometimes 
perceptible relative sea of indifference.

6. I'm not particularly keen to stop discontent, part of me would 
like to hear more of it up on the list. I'm keen to see robust and 
humorous discourse, wry observation, listings, reports, passionate 
advocacy, oblique disdain, announcements, scurrilous artistic 
speculation . . .

on the whole, of late  (over the past couple of years) I think it's 
been working well and the conversations are often worth paying 
attention to.  Coming full circle here it seems that there are 
occasions when exchanges might better be resolved back channel and 
times when there is an important bone being dragged through the 
radishes by moonlight. What might appear like moonlight to myself 
might be a stinking head of celery past its sell-by-date to another 
listee and so forth. That's the rub and the rubric. I'm quite 
accepting of full and frank exchanges providing there is listening in 
operation. But that's so hard to determine in this still dominantly 
visual medium.


love and love
cris


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