Chris: The term Academic Verse originated in I think the 50s. Like the term
Academic Painters on which it's based it has little to do with how or where
one makes a living (some on your list would be surprised, by the way, that
they earn their livings teaching--one or two adjunct courses are not so
much a living as a supplement to the family budget). Through the 70s and
into the 80s it meant the poetries not affiliated with those gathered in
Don Allen's New American Poetry. Armand Schwerner, for example, who taught
for his entire adult life, would never have been called an Academic Poet,
tho he might have been called an academic. I still use the term in this
sense, often creating a degree of confusion, because of my age.

Academic Poets never called themselves Academic Poets, and I suspect they
were unaware that we did--they were pretty much unaware of our existence,
except as a distant rumor or an occasional scandalous story about the Beats.

Mark


At 03:46 PM 2/3/2005, cris cheek wrote:
>Hiya,
>
>who are we talking about here? On the US side of the pond we can list
>at least the following as having supported themselves, whilst
>continuing to develop their creative practice, through teaching in
>universities and I mention the following as those that many on this
>list will have some knowledge of: (in no particular order and i'm
>deliberately mixing up generations and to a certain extent indicating a
>diversity of poetic camps) Susan Howe, Rae Armantrout, Carla Harryman,
>Bruce Andrews, Charles Bernstein, Bob Perelman, Harryette Mullen,
>Barrett Watten, Lyn Hejinian, Steve McCaffery, Rachel Blau duPlessis,
>Marjorie Welish, Cole Swenson, Jen Hofer, Chris Stroffoli, Steve Evans,
>Ben Friedlander, Barbara Cole, Keith Tuma, Nathaniel Mackey, Jim Reiss,
>Annie Finch, C S Giscombe, Bill Howe, Jed Rasula, Pierre Joris, Jerome
>Rothenberg, Steve Tomasula, Susan Wheeler, Jennifer Moxley, Mairead
>Byrne, Lisa Jarnot, Anne Waldman, Anselm Hollo, Charles Alexander,
>Amiri Baraka, David Antin, Robert Creeley, Clayton Eshleman, Peter
>Gizzi, Karen Mac Cormack, Eileen Myles, Juliana Spahr, Rita Dove, Joan
>Retallack, Lisa Samuels, Jorie Graham, Susan Schultz, Billy Collins . .
>.
>
>erm you know  -  and the point is?
>
>then we come closer to home and find the following in similar
>conditions: Andy Brown, Robert Sheppard, Harrett Tarlo, Will Rowe,
>Andrea Brady, Robert Hampson, Denise Riley, Tony Lopez, Keston
>Sutherland, Caroline Bergvall, Scott Thurston, John Hall, Patience
>Agbabi, Allen Fisher, Peter Middleton, Andrew Motion, Georges Szirtes,
>Jo Shapcott, Don Paterson, Sean O'Brien, Brian Catling, Ruth Padel, Ian
>Davidson, Tom Leonard, Bill Griffiths, JH Prynne, Rod Mengham, Peter
>Larkin, Simon Perril, Peter Robinson, Roy Fisher, David Miller, Carol
>Ann Duffy . . .
>
>erm (see above) ? ?
>
>fwiw I'm writing as a sometimes in sometimes out sometimes academic.
>That is I worked as a poet for twenty years before even going to
>college and the reason I went to college was because I'd been given
>some teaching work (a little) and wanted to know more about how it was
>in that climate (mid 1990s) to be a student.
>
>So I went to college, for the first time (apart from a dabble with the
>Open University in the mid 1970s), aged 39. I guess I could have taken
>my practice along and gone for a practice-based MA but instead did an
>access course, a degree (not in english or creative writing), a PhD and
>a debt i'm still repaying to boot. Throughout that time I got yearly
>contracts to teach as part-time lecturer (mostly in arts school
>contexts and mostly at Dartington College of Arts and there mostly in
>Performance Writing - now Writing) for about 4 months of the year and
>did other things the rest of the time (touring with bands, readings,
>commissioned works . . .). I say all this as it's clear to me that my
>teaching experiences, my own reflexiveness on what i had been doing and
>was up creatively, my creative practice and my earning (about 2500
>after tax for traveling between Lowestoft and Deven each week teaching
>for a day or two in between  -  hardly go to the bank stuff)
>intertwined.
>
>I've just returned from teaching at undergraduate and graduate levels
>in a big US university and can say something of that experience, if
>anybody really wants to get into it and something of how it differs
>from my experiences here.
>
>But i wonder how this hugely partial listing of names skews or at least
>plays into this emergent discussion. Many are not on these lists of
>course and that's of interest? There are striking differences between
>those two lists? And this is by no means intended as an apologia, nor
>an 'outing'. I'm curious as to quite where this discussion might go.
>
>It might well be a particular moment in poetics in Englishes this. One
>reason why the heat is currently in the air and mud flying in the media
>more broadly might be because poets of all persuasions are contesting
>the controls exerted through academic space. Another might be that so
>many many new poets emerge through creative writing course in one way
>or another? And again i'm not saying that's good, it's just so  -
>except . . .
>
>love and love
>cris