Thanks for this, David, but I think once again you may have missed what I
was saying - boring as it probably was. It's precisely the absence of any
aesthetic criteria in the report that worries me. (Though I realize how hard
it might be to include that without creating even more dissent.) In the
absence of that, or any discussion of it, the other forms of "validation"
look rather vacuous.
It certainly strengthens your argument if Carcanet and Bloodaxe were
involved in its drafting, but I would expect that the editors in propria
persona would be able to offer more forthright ideas about the value they
look for in the work they publish.
The editor/poet relationship seems to me very much a side issue and will
vary from press to press with no respect, as far as I can see, to whether
its a "major" or smaller publisher. Since Alec first posted on this subject,
his own KF&S press for example - which has some curious guidelines for
submissions - quite reasonably speaks about editing a number of the
manuscripts. Surely if an editor were to suggest a change to your own
manuscript - one that you saw as an improvement - you'd be grateful for the
help?
Best,
Jamie
----- Original Message -----
From: "David Lace" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Friday, May 27, 2011 9:10 PM
Subject: Re: Arts Council report on Contemporary Poetry
Jamie, I was not suggesting the extract was being prescriptive with regard
to any particular notion of value. All I was suggesting was that the way it
is written (I see Carcanet and Bloodaxe were involved in its drafting) gives
the impression that poetry worthy of publication has to necessarily go
through a validation process of some sort—be it that of an editor’s
aesthetic judgments or some other arbiter’s
My own view regarding the editor/poet relationship is that the editor should
not really be involved in more than proofreading decisions—certainly he/she
should not be making aesthetical decisions, which is what the extract seems
to be implying.
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