Geraldine, I can understand Peter’s point about his Cambridge years
being largely peripheral to life for him afterwards, if not altogether the
case regarding his poetic activities. But, as you suggest, going to
Cambridge and being involved in poetry there, would, I presume, give
poets more of a chance of being taken slightly more seriously than
otherwise would be the case.
This seems to be what is happening with the current incumbents of
the "Cambridge School", who, regardless of their merits, would not be
making such a splash in the US (re: The Chicago Review) if they had
been students at one of the newer universities.
I think Robert Sheppard’s initiative is partly a reaction to this situation,
although it has probably been a longstanding concern of his for many
years.
On Wed, 14 Oct 2009 13:13:35 +0100, Geraldine Monk
<[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>Peter,
>How on earth can you conclude that I 'imply that on one has the right
to a higher education at all' from what I said!! I'm totally flabbergasted
by your conclusion. There is absolutely nothing I said that you can
remotely construe this ridiculous implication. I have never come across
such a willful misreading (or to be more exact an imaginary reading). I
did not say that and as someone who benefitted from an higher
education I do not and never had believed such a thing. I'm actually
very angry about this Peter because people don't read these lists with
great care (as you demonstrate here) and stupid comments like this
often stick even when you haven't' said them.
>
>I was not being personal - I was not talking about students
backgrounds - I was saying that Cambridge University is a privileged
and prestigious institution - that is indisputable (well to everyone
except you Peter). If anyone else on this list brought out a mag from
say Sheffield or Leicester or Portsmouth or Wherever do you think it
would get a mention in TLS - of course it wouldn't. That was part of my
point. You are complaining about a review that has only come about
because of its Cambridge connection. I merely said the rest of us
would welcome such attention.
>
>In fact I wonder if The Journal of British and Irish Innovative Poetry
edited by Scott Thurston and Robert Sheppard and with an editorial
board covering every university in the world (I exaggerate but it's very
extensive) has been reviewed in TLS? If not I think it proves my point
about privilege.
>
>Higher Education For All,
>
>Geraldine
>
>
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Peter Riley
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Sent: Wednesday, October 14, 2009 9:12 AM
> Subject: Re: TLS on CLR
>
>
> Yes, G, but CLR is not an organ of Cambridge University. What you
say may apply to some of the younger contributors, though rather
awkwardly -- does being educated at Cam Uni automatically make you
party to conditions of extreme privilege? even if you got there under
your own steam, as it were? (as many, I admit, don't). Is a place of
learning automatically a place of "entrenched class-based authority" or
may it not in the careers of some people at any rate be simply a place
where you have the opportunity to teach and learn? I was a student
here for three years a long time ago and that was all I got out of it --
three years of respite. After that, doors shut, finished (except for
continuing use of library).
>
>
> Indeed the history of Europe's universities might suggest that they
are as likely to be hot-beds of revolution as club=houses for the upper
classes.
>
>
> CLR got some financial support from the University, but without
strings attached, i.e., with no obligation to represent the institution or
to draw its writers from among staff and students.
>
>
> You seem to imply that no one has the right to higher education at
all.
>
>
> Pip-pip,
> Px
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Anyway I don't see
>
> On 14 Oct 2009, at 01:08, Geraldine Monk wrote:
>
>
> Are you all really all upset Peter? How do you think this plays out
with the rest of us out here who would be deliriously happy to have the
TLS pronounce a fatwa on our writing if it gave us a few column inches.
Most of us will never get a glancing mention in its hallowed pages let
alone such undivided attention.
>
> TLS is an establishment mag writing about CLR, a magazine which
hails from one of the most prestigious and privileged establishments in
the world. So how come such privilege can be so upset about a bit of
low-grade wagging? (Hope none of you ever get invited onto Have I
Got News For You - you'd have to be hospitalized). And how can such
privilege talk about 'entrenched class-based authority' when it is
itself 'entrenched class-based authority' - you can't possibly be
portraying Cambridge Uni as a place of downtrodden oppressed plebs -
can you?!!
>
> The rest of us look on with schlock and woe,
>
> Toots,
>
> Gx
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Peter Riley
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Sent: Tuesday, October 13, 2009 11:12 PM
> Subject: Re: TLS on CLR
>
>
>
>
> People got upset about Campbell's review mainly because of the
patriarchal tone rather than any paraphrasable content to what he
said. You're reduced to a pathetic schoolchild whose homework, on
which you worked so hard, is being waved in front of the whole class
with sarcastic remarks. The tone of the club-house, the tone of
smartness, the "we know better" tone. To some this has quite shocking
ideological implications, representing entrenched class-based authority
and even echoing political oppression. That's maybe silly.
>
>
> Yes, it is silly, but understandable in the terms of a certain psychic
disposition.
>
>
> TLS is all right actually, it does some good things. You just don't
look to it for guidance on contemporary poetry. Nor to anywhere else.
>
>
> I have no idea and don't care whether TLS is "mainstream". It can
be duck-pond or rolling-main for all I care.
>
>
> PR
>
>
>
>
> On 13 Oct 2009, at 20:15, Terry Kelly wrote:
>
>
> James Campbell calls the CLR - without visible irony - "a splendid
affair," supplies the price and the place to get the mag AND devotes
several hundred words to it in the widely read TLS NB column. A cause
for mild celebration, I would think, rather than an opportunity for thin-
skinned displeasure. And I'm sure Mr Prynne won't get too hot under the
collar about some mainstream literary joshing.
>
> Terry Kelly
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Peter Riley
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Sent: Tuesday, October 13, 2009 1:04 PM
> Subject: Re: Jane Holland on avant-garde poetry
>
>
> I don't understand. You think Campbell is praising CLR
and "Cambridge" poetry? Like when he says of me that I've obviously
invented an obscure 1960s poet and written about him, because
I'm "Cambridge" and so I don't believe in truthfulness. This is
praise? "Poetry that no one can understand" ... "A stack of poetry
whose reason for existence is to be difficult" -- this too is praise? Does
anybody else read the review in this way? When he claims that the
issue is entirely dominated by JH Prynne (which it isn't), does he mean
that's a jolly good thing? I think not. In fact the sneering sarcasm of it
all seems to me to be overwhelming.
>
>
> PR
>
>
>
> I'll put the whole text here in case needed---
>
>
>
>
> The Cambridge Literary Review, No. 1, is a splendid affair. It is
280 pages long, tastefully printed on good paper; the copies are
numbered – ours is 514 our of 1,000. It is ludic, as you would expect:
Keston Sutherland's impenetrable excursion in prose contains footnotes,
one of which explicates "You" as "You" (if you had gone to Cambridge
you would get the joke); and it is, of course, "difficult". It even contains
an essay, "A History of Difficulty: On Cambridge poetry" by Jeremy Noel-
Tod, in which he settles a score with Craig Raine, his Oxford tutor.
Raine's problem, according to Noel-Tod, is being insufficiently
appreciative of poetry that no one can understand. Cambridge Literary
Review has a stack of poetry whose reason for existence is to be
difficult:
>
> CALL 2 NO LAW YR HYDROLIC SELF
> SPLISH SPLASH WITH YR
> HAND OVER YR LIFE
> EXCESS 2 HEAD CORTEXT CON
> NECTORS NEURON DIODE...
>
> and so on for quite a few of the tastefully printed pages. There is
a poem by J. H. Prynne – not presented as "A Message from Our
Sponsor", though it might as well be – and a portfolio of poems,
compiled by Peter Riley, by "a poet about whom neither I nor anyone I
have spoken to knows anything", Ray Crump. They were sent to Prynne
and Riley in the 1960s, and the author remains a mystery. Is this true?
Mr Riley wishes to persuade us that it is – as if we weren't aware that
the raison d'ętre of the Review is to encourage us to challenge
anyone's "truth".
>
> No one will accuse the editors of rootless cosmopolitanism: it is
concerned with Cambridge difficulty, the Cambridge Poetry
Festival, "Messianic Privacy in Cambridge Poetry". Richard Berengarten
writes engagingly about the Festival's beginnings, and Elaine Feinstein
offers reminiscences of Prospect. Can she be referring to the monthly
journal of politics and current affairs? Of course she can't. She means
Prosepect the Cambridge literary magazine of the 1950s. "Occasionally
J. H. Prynne looked in on us." Half a century later, he's still doing it.
>
> (Times Literary Supplement, October 9)
>
>
>
>
>
> (Actually the main point of attack, I notice, seems to be that a
magazine offering itself as a special issue on "Cambridge writing" is all
about Cambridge writing.)
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On 13 Oct 2009, at 12:39, Jeffrey Side wrote:
>
>
> I can't sense the nastiness you notice in Campbell's piece. As I
said, it
> seems positive. Please explain.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
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