To clarify: I wouldn't dream of accusing the whole brit-poets list, most of
whom are completely unknown to me, of smugness or anything. I meant my
rhetoric as impersonal: for "you" read "persons" or "one".
The brit-poets correspondents, or those who dominate it, have developed a
definite small-press kind of alienist identity, waving banners of
linguistic innovation, anti-empirical cultural revolutionism etc etc. Fine.
I think it's important to realize that there can be as much conformism,
smug know-all superiority, and opportunistic careerism, in those zones as
in any imaginary mainstream or success-poetry world, that's all.
Concerning the photograph at the back of Distant Points, I thought that was
Seamus Heaney. It's certainly not me.
Peter Riley
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