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Transparency

One of the differences between North American and British life, I think, is transparency. British society, older, and more traditional in many ways, still appears to often move forward through a series of nods and silent gestures - the patronage system that, in a monarchy, still means there are citizens knighted each year; much use of power, in the UK, is either rendered invisible, or less visible, than in, say, America - where, despite its many problems - one can currently see leading political figures openly debating the future of the US economy, and its failings - and problems with, for example, the Iraq war.

Yesterday's speech by Gordon Brown, for all its dullness with a human face approach, never broached the wars that Britain is fighting. Much gets dusted under the rug. Of course, Noam Chomsky is despised by mainstream America for seeking to delve deeper into the power structures of US finance and government - the entire West is based on smoke and mirrors (capitalism's trick of naturalising itself, as if competition was truly just what we are, what we do). Discussions of poetry, and poetics, in the UK, are often curiously distanced from the nitty-gritty: who publishes who, and why, and where - and who judges who, for what prize, and why - or even, how is a poem made, and why that way, and not another? I often strike some British poets as uncouth, as if it was wrong to actually question why, for instance, everyone (well, almost everyone) seems to think A is a brilliant poet, and master craftsman - or why B is still a minority taste in England. These questions are never personal - they are, in one sense, political - they seek to comprehend a system of judgements, that, with few engaged interlocutors, continues, mostly unchecked, and untested, by brunt of force - the force of those with the strongest will, and often, the best publishing jobs.

I was once told by a very good, serious, young avant-garde poet that no one can change the poetry system, all one can do is write good poems. However, that begs two questions: what is a good poem, and why can't one change the poetry system? Is it natural? Is it so entrenched, that it will last for a thousand years? In fact, the current poetry consensus is fragmenting, thanks to the rise of smaller innovative presses, like Salt, Eggbox, tall-lighthouse, and so on - and the emergence of dozens of young poets, often without vested interests (though many do seem linked to Roddy Lumsden, one of the most influential, engaged mentors that British poetry has ever had).

There do seem to be limits to who can rise, and how fast. I sometimes watch meteoric careers, with wonder. If anointed, will be protected, then boosted. This is fine, but it isn't about poetry - it's about the politics of the playground, and we all know it. Know it, but dare not speak out. It's not British to complain. However, the silence means that certain figures have amassed extraordinary influence, over the publishing, promotion, and reviewing, of poetry in the UK. This power has nothing, and everything, to do with poetry. TS Eliot blocked the publication of Wallace Stevens in the UK for some time - and that decision had a direct impact on the reception of the wonderful, sublime poetics that we now think of as Stevensian, within British poetry. That's just one example. There are many. Poetry editors, in the UK, exert immense power, and determine, more or less, what the mainstream thinks of as poetry.

I am not against influence - or even stewardship of an art form by leading practitioners. I would like to see more open discussion of the ways that poetry, publishing, and poetics, intermingle in Britain. Why does editor X think poet Y deserves to have a book, or prize, and not Z? Too often, the reason is, we are told, because the poet in question is "the real thing", or some other such fuzzy meaningless evaluation. British poetry seems to have moved away from clarity of judgement, such as was espoused by I.A. Richards. Poets rarely know on what grounds they are to be judged.

Why, for example, was Sean O'Brien's collection judged better than Edwin Morgan's? Not, as some think, sneeringly, for personal reasons. But, I think likely, due to poetics. Morgan's diverse, heterogeneity of style is more international than O'Brien's formal voice grounded in place. It's seen as "better" by many poets and critics here. This isn't just about language, or politics - it is, but not just - it's about laying cards out on the table: what's good poetry, and what isn't, and why.

I'd like to see a reasoned defense for the superiority of a fixed and constant voice, over a fluctuating verbal style (Heaney vs. Koch, for instance). What are the prejudices on which poetic preferences are based? Ironically, in the UK, the turn against elitism, and the rise of a literate working class (after 1945), saw poets like Amis, then Harrison, and now Paterson, avoid the pitfalls of so-called flamboyance, and rhetoric, in favour of a voiced but nuanced everyman-as-craftsman approach - the well-made lyric poem of experience and utterance; ironic, because this has become the new elite style. The old elite, academic, opaque, difficult, clever, educated - is now marginalised, and seen as "postmodern" and somehow unBritish (in some quarters). Whole styles have been shrugged off.

Morgan is a genius, who, in America, might be heralded as a major figure; here, he is lauded, but somewhat evaded. There is an anxiety in Britain about being too smart, too slick, too "American" - which is why Brown's presidential trick of bringing his wife out to introduce him yesterday was startling, and, though finally triumphant, momentarily embarrassing.

Eyewear is thinking of running a poll, to discover who its readers think are the most influential trend-setters, and style-makers, the true movers and shakers, in contemporary British poetry. If you can see something, then you can see for yourself. Feel free to suggest who should be included in the poll.

Comments

puthwuth said…
I think it's obvious, Todd, that the most influential person in British poetry today is none other than you! Surely.
EYEWEAR said…
Gee, David, thanks.

I'd be curious to hear what you really think is the dominant period style in Britain at this time.

Or is it all just photos and wisecracks from puthwuth?
puthwuth said…
My serious considered position is that, as a resident alien who has never submitted to a UK poetry press and who gives on average one poetry reading a year outside Hull, I have nothing to do with the politics of the UK poetry scene and they have nothing to do with me. I take a purely academic interest in them, from a distance, with no personal stake.
Andrew Shields said…
You've got a nice nutshell there with "the fixed constant voice" versus "a fluctuating verbal style"? Since I like Heaney AND Koch, I think I'm into both modes, but I think I'd rather be like Koch, doing not only the police but every walk of life in different voices.
Mark Granier said…
"Since I like Heaney AND Koch, I think I'm into both modes, but I think I'd rather be like Koch, doing not only the police but every walk of life in different voices."

Maybe that's my problem with Koch. I have a number of his collections, and also his excellent 'I Never Told Anybody', about 'teaching poetry writing in a nursing home, in which his examples and advice make perfect sense to me. Talking about poetry, he is usually lucid and, occasionally, brilliant. But his own poetry too often reads to me like Ogden Nash with a dash of dementia, going to ANY lengths to avoid anything that might look even vaguely like lyric or narrative. But I love his OTT 'Variation on a Theme by William Carlos Williams'. He may be best as the Joker, but I am afraid I often miss the joke.
Anonymous said…
Thanks for the mention Todd, though of course, mentoring and patronage are kissing cousins, surely? There may come a time when my championing a younger poet will be met with rolled eyes. In fact, I don't feel the poets I work with are 'linked' to me - I hope at least a few secretly think my work is tacky or fussy or overblown or something - but respect me for my ability to move them onward.

The 'well made lyric poem' seems to be the latest Aunt Sally. I think Morgan has favoured that style at least as much as those you name.

I think Morgan's limited acknowledgement is only due to lack of a commercial press marketing team pressing the broadsheets, but he has done as well as any poet in recent years for press interest - and it's not his main concern. Picture in the paper? Meh.
EYEWEAR said…
Good hearing from you, Roddy.

The key word in the phrase "well-mdae lyric poem" is, to me, "well-made".

The lyric itself - as my research is leading me to think - is robust, and can traverse a very wide range of conditions, and expectations, from romanticism, to modernism, to the current disruptions of experiment. However, the need to shape the poem into some well-crafted form can be limiting. Good/bad distinctions, in terms of craft, form, and style, are, arguably, a little more tight than they need to be, currently. The rebarbative, and the sloppy, are also areas to sometimes venture into - poetry happens across a wide vista.
Anonymous said…
Sure - no arguments there. I read the young Irish poet Dave Lordan's book today - I believe you know his work - and feel it fits nicely into what you say above.
Anonymous said…
Hi Todd enjoyed the article. I think Michael Longley is the best UK poet I have read. Also Kathleen Jamie's book "The Tree House" was very good and Penelope Shuttle's last few poetry collections i thought were excellent to; cheers Graham Hardie
Anonymous said…
Oops - just want to qualify that in case it seemed I mean Lordan is 'sloppy' - I mean his work is a nice mix of craft and edge, 'rebarbative' in its confrontational as opposed to 'repellent' sense.
Lordan is a very compelling live reciter, and Billy Ramsell who is also a Cork poet who won the Kavanagh i think.

Longley is the most human of poets i have had the pleasure to experience reading his work. What struck one, was a complete absence of the *shiny armour of moi* as one of his partners *earning a rhyme* puts what, unfortunately, many very talented poets don.

L of course was on the dry for ten yrs, due to outside pressures at the day job in the arts council, in which he had to dance the ballet of office politics, and it was Achill island which re-birthed him. The 57 sq mile Achill island is the furthest west on our continent one can go, with the second highest sea-cliffs in Europe at
Croaghaun

The ollamhs amongst us will know this is one of the primary locations of the Hawk of Achill, a bird who pecked the eye of Fintan mac Bóchra, a poet-prophet who came to the island before the dulge with Noah's grand daughter, Ceasair, aged 15 and (depending on the source) either fifty or thrice times fifty women, (17 of whom were his wives) and two other chaps Bith and Ladhrathree, who tragically died, along with all the gals in the deluge.

Fintan however, was lucky, surviving for the next 5500 years, into the time of Fionn mac Cumhail, (finn mcCool) mainly in the form of a salmon, as this snippet of verse from the Book of Fermoy in the legendary classic in Irish myth

The Colloquy between Fintan and the Hawk of Achill - informs us:

My life before the black flood
Was fifteen years of years;
After the flood the gods gave me
Five thousand five hundred years..

The hawk had the same 5500 years and this meeting was at the end of their lives, when they swapped their histories, after Fintan had met saint Pat and given him a full run down of the last five millenia, dying once the holy doings had been passed over and recorded.

Fintan shifted into an eagle and hawk for certain periods, before turning human when he met Paddy.

This is the bit where Fintan discovers the hawk he is chatting to, was responsible for his eye going missing:

A hawk came out of cold Achill,
Above the river-mouth of Assaroe;

I will not hide the fact, mysterious as it was,

He carried away with him one of my eyes.

From that night 'The Blind One of Assaroe'

I was named; it was a cruel act,
From that out I am without my eye:
Small wonder for me to be aged.

~

The Hawk

~

It was I who swallowed yr eye,
O Fintan of the fresh heart;

I am the grey hawk of time
Alone in the middle of Achill.

Have a goz at the link Todd, tru7ly stunning, Achill is a magical place. one's paternal grandmother was native there, and both my mother's parents from Bohola not too far away.

Walking the rhoderdendrum road
from McLoughlin's to the cottage

i became connected to a patchwork
of field, bog and peat smoke

where even dead brown heads
of wild rhubarb fell into being

with dog bark and bird call
puncturing the silence wrapping

the island completely
save for the foam-white horse water

dancing at the Atlantics eastern edge...

opening of a poem of mine, Connected. in my first collection, Ovid Yeats - Love Poems, 60% royalty, one of the five thousand newbs lowering the tone.

one's paternal grandfather was Cornelius Desmond, Macroom, West Cork. michael collins and Leanne O'Sullivan country.

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