Now David K is playing the game: make a historical change of degree disappear
through resort to its origins. I did not say either of the following:
information technology was not sophisticated before Thatcher; or Thatcher was
somehow responsible for information technology. As far as government action
could be influential, her government's policies and Reagan's helped towards
the deregulation of stock markets which went hand in hand with the rise of
money trading via computer.  William Gibson's "vision" of the global net,
based on the military technology, was published as Neuromancer in, I think,
1983, at the height of the Thatcher-Reagan years, and I did indeed read it
about then.

The impact of computerised, deregulated trading has been absolutely enormous:
capital flows in one day now come to $1.3 trillion, equivalent to a full
quarter's turnover by the global trade in goods and services, dwarfing, that
is, human productive capacity. Most of this is fortune-making by funds and
individuals and is not how businesses usually obtain investment (though it may
be useful for pension funds, for example).  I won't dwell on such well known
facts, in which Thatcherism was only one player.  But it's certainly a
question of "degree = major change": the military didn't do it.

David, just as much as me, implies that we "should" be something: that is, not
Shelley. (Oh!, that dog-eared quotation about legislators!)  So was Shelley
not a good poet?  To use David's phrase, "who arbitrates" that we should not
be like, say, Auden, in his breadth of concern?  And please don't quote the
Yeats poem.  Please!  "Who arbitrates" kyboshes any opinion whatsoever; it has
a superficial appeal because we do use it properly when we attack various
kinds of censorship.  Otherwise, I arbitrate for my personal expressions of
opinion and I don't to try to ban anything except the truly vicious -- how
could I?  I will support any good poetry, in any genre, "intended" for
practically any audience, bar fascist, etc.  (Spare me the cases of
Pound/Eliot too!)

In a poem I finished in the early 1980s, I recognised that a few of the things
Margaret Thatcher was doing were necessary.  Most of my friends at that time
wouldn't listen to me.  It's impossible to argue with David's vague statement
that she "wasn't the worst thing to happen to Britain".  The overall effect of
her years in power -- not of her herself, for of course political change is so
multi-layered in its causes -- has been very profound indeed, and there's a
lot of harm in it.  It has been part of international changes which make
worried and I don't by nature have a doomsday mentality.  John Maddox has, it
seems, just published a book pointing to the major, and well known, global
dangers which the international financial flows make it so difficult to
confront urgently enough.

"Who do we think we are?" David asks.  "The government agencies must be
laughing their socks off."  Or, suggests Ric, we can take our stance via the
poems themselves. 

Few modern poets are daft enough to think that poems create political change,
or even "should".  But they bear witness, good or bad, within their own
circles of publication, whether they are about apple blossom or Prince
Charles's birthday.  A lack of political poems in these urgent times would be
such a witness, by negation, and it's the future that might laugh at it. Poems
are part of what poets do to each other and to their readers, just as my own
behaviour is part of what I do to my friends.  If my friends get heated about
politics, I don't suddenly spring up at the dinner table and say, "Government
agencies must be laughing their socks off."  We are responsible for what we
do, and poetry *should* (I have no trouble with the word here) reflect not
just an everyday sensitivity towards the small events of our lives and
languages (though that, too), but also the breadth of the human mind and the
complexity of the modern city, of nature in its threats and changes, and, why
not?, of the international situation too, as it has impact on an ordinary
life. It should do so because it can.  In this, as so often, the "should"
comes from those who would restrict poetry: I have no restrictive "should" to
utter, only an expansive one.

Academic discourse.  Well, since I strongly believe that part of human mind is
to be philosophical and even rarified, I have always supported difficult work
even when it has borrowed its languages from the academy.  It is not the only
progressive poetry, however.

We have so few poets.  And now this OUP business.  Hooked into the financial
questions I'm discussing.  Shocking for a major university.  Are we not to be
concerned?  Will we not write to OUP?  Satirise them in poems?  For god's sake
let's help each other as much as we can in our various practices.

Doug  


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