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Dear David,



Thanks for supplying this. 


It looks to me as if there are two issues here:




Yes, it is delicious that Bill was 'a gentle and unassuming biker' - just as delicious as that he should be a biker and a very scrupulous Anglo-Saxon Scholar (as his PhD on Alfred's Anglo-Saxon translation of  De Consolatione Philosophiae shows) -  or a biker and a fine classical pianist.  Classical piano playing is a bit harder to tie into gang culture.  I knew Bill for over thirty years  and my experience of him was of 'a gentle and unassuming man'. This description of him is based on my encounters with him not on some stereotype of bikers. 


I have seen there is a further email from you. I might not get to it today.



Yours,



Robert

   


From: British & Irish poets <[log in to unmask]> on behalf of David Bircumshaw <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: 10 August 2018 20:44:46
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Bill Griffiths: August 20
 
It's not possible for me to reproduce all the exchanges here, you have to delve through the 1997 archives and the messages don't hang on just one thread. But I did say that I had realised that bikers, prison, Anglo-Saxon and the poetry scene have a commonality - they do - it's that gang culture features in all. Here is Bill Griffiths, from this list, displaying exactly the mindset of literary gang warfare: he turns me into a member of London's avant-garde turf wars and close associate of someone at that point I had never met.
I never met Griffiths: I did meet many bikers in my youth and the idea of a gentle and unassuming biker is delicious. I do like his attacking me for using long words, the voice of the pseudo populist itself.

Dear List,

Apologies for putting David Bircumshaw in such a flurry.  I assumed 
that after his work on my behalf in 'Angel Exhaust' 12 - after the 
editorship had mysteriously passed to Andrew Duncan - that he would 
scarcely be surprised at my responding.  His provocation was after 
all not unakin to shoving me in the ear with an umbrella with a 
horse's head handle.

Now here the average list member can check the internet site for 
'Angel Exhaust' if they like and see if I am being oversensitive 
about his contribution or not. That very same issue embellished by 
David Bircumshaw contained an unsatisfactory assessment of Eric 
Mottram, while earlier issues contained abusive assessments of Bob 
Cobbing and his work, with the occasional germinal poke at my good 
self. 

This is the context in which David Bircumshaw chose to place his 
curious re-writing of one my shortest poems.  So short, that it 
hardly needed a Bircumshaw at all to point out its short-comings.  
Nonetheless he valiantly strives to make as much muck and 
pig out of nine lines as he can.  I would say this was very much 
placing himself at the forefront of the campaign against a few 
targeted poets, which flowered so spectacularly in Andrew Duncan's 
article for 'First Offence'.

Why do I object to David Bircumshaw claiming an anti-right 
stance for his critical mirage?  Because the main figures 
attacked by his associate Andrew Duncan are Eric Mottram and 
Bob Cobbing.  That this is some harmless expression of mutual 
rivalry between Cambridge and London I beg to disbelieve; it 
seems to me more significant that these two have been key 
figures in a socialist-democratic expansion of modern culture - 
not by any overtly political action, but by a generous disposition 
to encourage innovation and experiment, as against the rather 
elite, exclusive, and negative image of European High Culture 
Andrew Duncan seems to me to propagate.

What else is there to link David Bircumshaw and Andrew Duncan?  A 
very considerable similarity of tone and attitude I should say.  
They share the same dependence on Freudian assumptions (David 
Bircumshaw, mailing of 8 Nov 1998 re puns and Andrew Duncan on 
poetry as confession in essay on Bob Cobbing in 'Angel Exhaust' 
9-10).  The same defensive ploy of resorting to rare words and 
unexplained elite concepts (David Bircumshaw's recent mailings and 
Andrew Duncan passim).  They also share a sort of self-mystification 
process, as though they chose to locate in some startling scifi 
situation of Jack Vance.

I am not saying that David Bircumshaw and Andrew Duncan share one 
brain.  I have no evidence on this subject at all.  

But it does seem to me odd, that David Bircumshaw should somehow 
naturally see abstract words as alternatives to insults.  Again, 
this rings remarkably like the tendency to personal abuse that 
Andrew Duncan has come to favour recently.  He can hardly have 
misunderstood my preference for facts over abstractions when it 
comes to serious assessment of any subject.  But perhaps in all 
this he coincides with Andrew Duncan purely by coincidence, and 
it is evidence of no cultural connection or sympathy at all.  

How can we test it?  By deeds, surely, rather than words.

Will David Bircumshaw withdraw his mangling of my poem from 
publication and from the internet and apologise?  

I do not expect any amazing revelation or denunciation.  I merely 
ask him to be a little less evasive about his position, and little 
more considerate before he single anyone out again for would-be 
worldwide dishonour. This is surely the way - rather than treating us 
to lots of long words - to establish his name for fairness and 
objectivity.

bill

[log in to unmask]




On 10 August 2018 at 19:57, Luke <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
I sound like a dick, sorry. Just pseudo sticking up for David, and annoyed that no-one else uses this list except to mourn dead friends... People are mostly just people, would be nicer to have a discussion of the poetry.

Luke

On 10 August 2018 at 19:48, Luke <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> My impression was, precisely, of a 'gentle and unassuming man'. And, yes, he lived on the breadline

Maybe I'm missing something. I'll buy some books.

On 10 August 2018 at 19:40, Hampson, R <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

Thank you for this. I knew Bill from the 1970s onwards - and this fits with my sense of him. I heard him talking about Old English poetry; I heard him reading on numerous occasions; and I met up with him at Westfield when he was archiving Eric Mottram's papers. My impression was, precisely, of a 'gentle and unassuming man'. And, yes, he lived on the breadline - and died far too soon.




Robert 


From: British & Irish poets <[log in to unmask]AC.UK> on behalf of Paul Holman <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: 09 August 2018 21:21:12
To: [log in to unmask]C.UK
Subject: Re: Bill Griffiths: August 20
 
David, would you care to explain, carefully & slowly, what you mean by that remark. I knew Bill Griffiths well back in the day, & he was a gentle & unassuming man, located so far from any kind of literary privilege that the bulk of his writing was issued as very obviously home made spiral bound pamphlets. He lived on the breadline, & spent time among bikers, in prison, & on a houseboat before settling deeply into life at Seaham, all a very long way from centres of cultural power & influence. He died in middle age, with a tiny readership & plenty of work left to do, & I see absolutely no reason to carp that his poetry, which is absolutely breathtaking at its best, is receiving a degree of attention & celebration now.

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