Peter wrote:

>Anyway there is a more "native" British way which goes back basically to
Dylan Thomas and is a quite different idea of what it is to be innovative
or any of those things. Not so much Thomas's popular poems but the others,
things like "Vision and Prayer",  but going back  before that to the
mid-30s.  Taken on by a number of poets in the 1940s, notably W.S. Graham
(who revised the whole thing through his life), GF Hendry, Dorian Cooke,
Thomas Good, quite a lot of them.  And it was stopped, almost literally,
put a stop to, suppressed, so viciously and incessantly attacked by
poetical journalism and academic intervention that it just seemed to cave
in under the pressure.  Most of the poets either stopped writing or changed
the way they wrote. So we never hear about most of those poets now, they
are not reprinted, not read, and mentioned in academia only with a sneer
and a laugh. Even Thomas himself is not generally welcome in the English
Departments, though he's too strong to be suppressed.

Yet Paul Celan, who wrote in a quite comparable way to some of the British
1940s experimenting poets, is in Penguin and "acknowledged to be the
greatest European poet of the 20th Century".  That's what Britain's like.<

Absolutely. It was put a stop to. It's ok if it's from 'abroad' but we won't have it here.

Best

Dave




David Bircumshaw

Spectare's Web, A Chide's Alphabet
& Painting Without Numbers

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/david.bircumshaw/


----- Original Message -----
From: "Peter Riley" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Monday, November 29, 2004 11:22 AM
Subject: Coherent traditions (was Re: Performance Poetry)


A lot of interesting writing among all those names Alison mentioned, but I
can't see the ensemble as a singularity, as a linear thing, a tradition.
It seems to spread all over the place in all directions, a web or a net.
To speak relativistically it would only make sense as an "alternative" if
we define what it is an alternative to. And there too you won't find a
singularity but a great spread of practices, some of them perhaps very
close to some of the "alternatives".

There is actually another view of different poetry in Britain. I mean the
American influence isn't the only index of advancedness (this is something
of a global problem -- someone, was it Ken Bolton? was complaining that in
Australia & NZ there is no way in poetry to be radical but to be
Americanised,  there is no "native" way of being radical (not of course
referring to native Australians)  I wonder if this is true, probably not.)

Anyway there is a more "native" British way which goes back basically to
Dylan Thomas and is a quite different idea of what it is to be innovative
or any of those things. Not so much Thomas's popular poems but the others,
things like "Vision and Prayer",  but going back  before that to the
mid-30s.  Taken on by a number of poets in the 1940s, notably W.S. Graham
(who revised the whole thing through his life), GF Hendry, Dorian Cooke,
Thomas Good, quite a lot of them.  And it was stopped, almost literally,
put a stop to, suppressed, so viciously and incessantly attacked by
poetical journalism and academic intervention that it just seemed to cave
in under the pressure.  Most of the poets either stopped writing or changed
the way they wrote. So we never hear about most of those poets now, they
are not reprinted, not read, and mentioned in academia only with a sneer
and a laugh. Even Thomas himself is not generally welcome in the English
Departments, though h's too strong to be suppressed.

Yet Paul Celan, who wrote in a quite comparable way to some of the British
1940s experimenting poets, is in Penguin and "acknowledged to be the
greatest European poet of the 20th Century".  That's what Britain's like.

There could be a case for making out that JH Prynne's poetry partook of
this development, not consciously and not in a linear development, but that
there was some kind of leap over from the mid-1940s to him, or he made the
same kinds of discovery in formulating his methods.

If anyone wants to follow it up there's a big review of Graham by me in the
latest Jacket which goes into some of this.

I wonder if this also answers Trevor's question about imbalance? Probably
not.   But a conformism is a thing that represses, and this might be a case
where an innovative practice tied to one line of development represses
another innovative  practice,  rather than just repressing the
non-innovative.

/PR