Hi Geraldine
I've been pondering this post of yours for several days, I'm not sure about
the adequacy of my response, my immediate thought was and is that the
problem with 'Englishness' in relation to poetry is the embededness, the
intensity of our class-culture. It's not that such problems don't exist in
other societies, but here the entrenchment is unique. When one does see
anthologies of mainly English poets there is a uniformity of tone, whether
'mainstream' or 'avant-garde' that speaks Oxbridge-London or, equally, the
crappo dumbdowns of 'performance'.
This is an uncaring society, you can see its results on the streets, our
frigid toned Queen is its perfect emblem, and voice belongs not to the
'english' but to those of an appropriate social standing. I saw a thing the
other day where a certain Poet Laureate recommended a festival run by a
certain individual as the 'best in England'. I have had the misfortune to
meet that individual and it is a self-seeking talentless egotistic mercenary
bastard on the grandest of scales. But it has all the right social
credentials.
I'm not comfortable about the adequacy of my reply, there is just too much
gunge involved in these issues.
Best
Dave
David Bircumshaw
Leicester, England
Home Page
A Chide's Alphabet
Painting Without Numbers
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/david.bircumshaw/index.htm
----- Original Message -----
From: "Geraldine Monk" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Friday, November 29, 2002 1:56 AM
Subject: Re: (no subject)
> > anyhow, i'm teaching a course on irish lit next january and am loading
the
> > first half heavily with modernists. but after beckett i get a bit stuck.
> >> i'll be very grateful for any ideas
> >
> > many thanks
> >
> > stuart allen
Hello Stuart - apologies for riding on the back of your query but your
request has just sparked a thought which has been nagging away at the back
of mind for some time now.
There are many-many studies and seminars and think tanks and anthologies of
Irish poetry and the Welsh and Scots have their own considerable thing
going. But the English - as an ethnic group - are rarely considered on
their own. So, for example, one upshot of this is that the countries
surrounding England (or, in the case of the Scotland ruling England! ) have
their own anthologies which us downtrodden English are not allowed to be
part of but the ones we are allowed to be part of - well - we have to share
with the Irish (and not just the Northern Irish!) the Scots and the Welsh.
Now apart from being insanely jealous at all the attention that lot are
getting I think there is actually a genuine oversight going on here.
The huge change in social economic and class structures has 'allowed'
(fought for at Peterloo and on the picket lines) a whole generation and
gender of English kids from none mid/upper classes to strut their stuff -
almost coinciding with a whole generation of second generation born here
English kids from the Carrabean and Asia and Poland, and etc against a
backdrop of the old university cliques and the occasional breakaway
wild-child.
What a subject for a young academic - something that no one else has given a
damn about - or is that that the subject is still too touchy - is it still
too early to be able to say you're English (if you're white) without it
being taken as a statement of racial prejudice or branded a National
Fronter. Or is it just too complex. Or has it been written about at length
and I was too busy reading about the buggering(s) about of the royal butler
and all things beginnig with B,
Carry on up the Khyber,
G.
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