Cris is right. (Will I get a mainstream book contract when they see how well
I argue?)

Right about the comparison with other organisations and the special ire
which seemed reserved for the Pot Soc

And my recollection of things at the time of the famous resignation is a
sense

* that we couldn't win - that undercurrent of maybe we could do a deal,
surely they are honourable was quite strong at times... v similar to some of
what has been seen recently of "let's get back to the real business" - which
was all debilitating
* that it was taking all my time

one of the problems was we had staff who, it seemed to me, didn't do what
the council / executive told them to do unless they agreed with it and
didn't refuse either, just accepted the instruction and delayed and delayed
and never announced it wasn't carried out until you asked, if you asked

this could go from small things - such as the decision by the council to buy
a table and chair for the association of little presses to have its base at
Earls Court - up to v big things such as buying the lease of 21 Earls Ct Sq
for a song, the latter being a major omission financially

it takes longer to check up on everything done by someone else than it does
to do it yourself and we were being exhausted

L



-----Original Message-----
From: cris cheek <[log in to unmask]>
To: british-poets <[log in to unmask]>
Date: 22 November 1998 23:42
Subject: RE: factualities


|Hi all,
|
|coming back home after a ludicrous spin of a week, at the end of which
|Miles Champion had asked me what had happened under this subject heading
|and we'd had a lengthy head to head about it. I'm glad that the issues are
|broadening. But as they do so, it would seem that the field of discussions
|becomes murkier.
|
|But there is an historical context that might be worth remembering in that
|time of 'artist-led' initiatives. The Poetry Society was temporarily run by
|poets. At a time that its contemporaries in innovative approaches to music
|had set up the London Musicians Collective, in film there was the London
|Film-makers Coop, in new dance there was the X6 Collective, Camerawork in
|photography. Each an artist-led organisational structure. I belive the
|POetry Society of this period belongs alongside them. Each had a magazine
|too, 'Musics' (leter Contexts), 'Readings', 'Camerawork', 'New Dance'. This
|is no coincidence.
|
|Yet, none of the others achieved sufficient quality of threat to the
|'mainstream' in contradistinction to which it emerged, to be considered in
|need of quashing. Except for the Poetry Society that is. I don't suggest
|this in any sense other than that it is curious how much of a threat what
|took place at the Poetry Society must have been seen, in order to order an
|investigation headed by a member of that august body, the House of Lords
|(Sir John Witt) and pushed through from the top at the Arts Council
|(Charles Osborne). Could it be that what was dangerous about the Poetry
|Society at that time was exactly what Andrew Duncan, according to Doug,
|criticises it for failing? Namely some provocative, and if we are to
|measure it by the reaction presumably at least partially successful,
|experiments in the democratisation of new writing in poetry. Why was the
|Poetry Society singled out? What was it about the poetry and the stance
|towards poetry that rendered it the subject of such vicious attack (which
|appears to be continuing)?
|
|ADs critique implies that something other than a 'retreat' was a
|possibility. (How long did it take the party left to recover under the same
|politcal imperatives? Has it recovered?) But was what took place in fact a
|retreat or an abandonment of fallow ground? Do such arguments not play into
|redundantly binary concepts of centre and margin?
|
|You see, you might, I might, argue in favour of a process of necessary
|dispersal from centre that this unwittingly effected. The beginnings of
|essential de-centralisation. The result, today, is the emergence of
|increasingly robust trans-local networks. Poised to take advantage.
|Probably not what Charles Osborne had in mind.
|
|A key assemblage then in Doug's paraphrase of AD's focus lies, as Bill
|Griffiths suggests, in the application of 'democratic' to 'experimental'
|and 'poetry'. These are not comfortable bedfellows. In what ways can
|experimental poetry be democratic? Are we talking about Chris Smith's
|liking for a 'people's poet' or Blair avowed preference for a 'peoples'
|poet' as laureate? If we're going to talk about democracy as not being a
|manufacture of consent, if we're talking about it as an experiment then I'm
|getting interested.
|
|How might a democratically experimental poetry work? Might it for example,
|dispell problems of mysticism by revealing its process, by composing work
|which explores ways to maximise the empowerment of the reader? Might it
|suggest that poetry be publicly available, not merely in books but on
|billboards, on television etcetera? Which language might it be written in?
|What values might it embody? Might it not provide access to facilities and
|resources by which anybody might bring their poems into print? Might it not
|seek to provide links between contemporary 'experimental' approaches and
|those of the past?
|
|Sounds a little like the Poetry Society in the mid 1970s, doesn't it?
|
|hmmmm
|
|For the record the LFMC is now rehoused in the splendid Lux cinema in
|HOxton Square, alongside London Film and Video Arts. X6 became Chisenhale
|(something yours truly was actively involved with the development of for
|almost a decade), still operating in Bow. The LMC runs its annual festival,
|the magazine 'Resonance' and is increasingly dabbling in mainstream venue
|programming (i do not mention that perjoratively). Camerawork is still
|going.
|
|The Poetry Society was placed back into the 'safe' hands of bureaucrats.
|One of the main criticisms levelled at it, in my memory, was its
|over-reliance on 'volunteers'. Nowadays though arts organisations are
|praised for any involvement they can secure from 'volunteers'. Plus ca
|change
|
|love and love
|cris
|
|
|
|
|
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Lawrence Upton's website: http://members.spree.com/sip/lizard/
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
"WORD SCORE UTTERANCE CHOREOGRAPHY in verbal and visual poetry"
edited by Bob Cobbing and Lawrence Upton
Writers Forum, London, 1998; 156 pp; ISBN 0 86162 750 4
---------------------------------------------------------------------------





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