On Sun, 1 Mar 1998, Stuart Mitchell wrote:
> As someone who teaches English to children - and who teaches song writing
> too -
> the chances to encounter the works of the excellent poetry being
> produced at present that isn't Bloodaxe or Faber are very remote.

I wouldn't want my earlier comment to be anti-teacherist, though in my
local experience, what with all the curriculum pressures etc, there aren't
terribly many like Stuart who'd be bothered to check what's out there, or
who'd give it a go if it were laid open before them - "Poetry is for
interested people" said Zukofsky rather starkly. Teachers aren't of course
the only ones who boggle at the prospect of nosing their way up the
fragmentary and ill drained channels away from the mai- away from the well
drained ditches of "official poetry".

And thanks, Stuart, for confirming that there *is* a value to the practice
of singing of the unknown into the unknown. I don't think anyone ever
proposed or required a unified approach, but still the distances between
us aren't so great as render cross-reading impossible.

& on
RC




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