I understand that, Jeff, but I think the great differences in the  
academy's various reading of poetry (e.g. theory bound and which  
theory, politically/ environmentally/ gender centred, versions of  
literary history..., conceptualist, internationalist, regional... )  
will always call for a great variety of poetry production for their  
fodder (avant-garde and otherwise). That would certainly include non- 
intellectual or even anti-intellectual poetry. And poetry journalism  
is and always will be more powerful than the academy in forming  
tastes. In fact I doubt if now we could have a repetition of things  
like the 1960s Queens University Belfast group promotion, or the 1960s  
Oxford/Cambridge recruitment drives. It's also not true that the  
creative writing industry produces homogenised poetry.
Peter




On 6 Apr 2016, at 19:07, Jeffrey Side wrote:

Peter, you say in an earlier post here:

‘... at which the "avant-garde poets" start complaining louder than  
ever that they are being taken over by the academy and will be forced  
against their instincts to write academic poetry and avant-garde  
poetry will becomes the same thing as a fictive category called  
"mainstream" not because it will change its nature but because it will  
be taken seriously and even liked by forms of officialdom and  
educational structures and all sorts of people,  which is a terrible  
thing to happen. Have I got the picture? I'm afraid I am unable to  
worry about this.’

I don’t think this is the main complaint. It seems to me that this has  
already largely happened in any case. The main concern is not so much  
that, but rather that a two-tier system will evolve (if it hasn’t  
already) comprising of an avant-garde that is officially sanctioned,  
or legitimised, by academia and an avant-garde that is not. The latter  
will be debarred for various reasons (some possibly to do with not  
having the right literary or academic connections or the right  
education, etc.), but the main reason would probably be that the  
poetry is seen as being too “primitive” or not as “knowing” as the  
more schooled sorts of academically sanctioned avant-garde poetry  
currently nurtured on MA creative writing courses designed and run by  
avant-garde poet-academics.

This to me is the main concern, whether avant-garde poetry as a form  
of literature remains generally ignored by the mainstream or welcomed  
by it doesn’t matter. So like you, I am unworried by it.