Shopping Opportunity-revisited
Early discussions about the purpose of Angel Exhaust centred on the invisibility of modern poetry from Britain; an abyss which makes our regular reviews of new issues, and selections of new poetry, merely eclectic and fragmentary. It's clearly very hard for people who missed the Seventies to discover the past of the present. This is only possible by personal contacts-a grotesque situation for a developed nation. There is a great shortage of good books on modern British poetry, although James Acheson and Romana Huk's groundbreaking survey Contemporary British Poetry came out after I made this list. If we could draw a map of British poetry since 1960—the real stuff—our message would have been delivered and we could stop or do something else.
Issue Fifteen included a "shopping list" of significant books of British poetry since 1960. This is partly a way of building an exhibit answer to the constant question "Why do you bother with all this small press stuff": a thing to point to rather than just saying the same words over and over. But the list needs qualifying in a dozen ways. I would agree that the list isn't a "map", but it was the most dense way of filling three pages. I tried to launch a series of "Retro Classics", to recapitulate modern classics in simple terms. This was a disaster, since after two years only one piece had arrived. All this is why we put together a shopping list; most of our regular readers will regard something so forthright as unbearably vulgar, but it's a hell of a lot easier than trying to write 200 reviews. It is easy to reverse the direction of the lens and make the list into a portrait of the compiler: so that where he identifies, he projects qualities that don't exist, and where he is ignorant, he fails to pick up qualities which do exist. If anyone said this, I would agree with them. Nonetheless, the list lists objects in our shared world, which you can take home and read. Even where some fortunate (and multidimensionally pre-selected) chance told me that a poetic object existed, problems in laying hands on it have been extreme; all through the research for this project, I was unemployed, so that buying books was really out of the question except in charity shops (or from library sales: 40p for Iliad of Broken Sentences in Barnet, January 1995). The publication situation of Scottish poetry has really been far worse than for the English equivalent.
We hope it's clear that we're not trying to tell you what to do, but just trying to make information publicly available. The scene is still hurting from episodes like the Introduction to the infamous Morrison/Motion anthology saying that nothing of great interest happened in the sixties and seventies. To get to understand the modern history of British poetry, you have to be nearly a genius at shopping. This space is open for anyone who wants to supply other lists or comments.
Anyone who can supply information (and, hopefully, photocopied texts) for Joseph Macleod/Adam Drinan, Charles Madge, Graeme Jukes, Una Kroll, Eddie Flintoff, David Wevill (among many others) would earn my deep gratitude.
I hesitate to make a list for the 1990s because there is so much I haven't read yet. These additions are tentative but I also emphasize the tentative nature of the whole project.
1995 Brian Catling, The Blindings; Niall Quinn, Nick Macias, and Nic Laight, However Introduced to the Soles; David Greenslade, Burning Down the Dosbarth; Tim Atkins, Folklore 1-25; Alan Ross, After Pusan
1996 Robert Crawford, Masculinity; W.N.Herbert, Cabaret McGonagall; Elizabeth Bartlett, Two Women Dancing, selected poems 1942-95; Rod Mengham, Unsung: New and Selected Poems; George Mackay Brown, Following a Lark; Tony Lopez, False Memory; David Greenslade, Creosote; Gavin Selerie, Roxy; Kelvin Corcoran, Melanie's Book; Geoffrey Hill, Canaan
1997 Grace Lake, Parasol 1 Parasol 2 Parasol Avenue; Tondo aquatique; Robert Hampson, Seaport; Vittoria Vaughan, The Mummery Preserver; Christopher Middleton, intimate chronicles; John James, Schlegel eats a Bagel; Karlien van den Beukel, Pitch Lake; Frank Kuppner, Second Best Poems from Chinese History; Tom Raworth, Clean and Well-Lit, Selected Poems 1987-95; Barry MacSweeney, The Book of Demons; Kevin Nolan, Alar; Rob MacKenzie, Off Ardglas; Helen Macdonald, Safety Catch
Anthologies: Conductors of Chaos, edited Iain Sinclair; Out of Everywhere, edited Maggie O'Sullivan; Worlds of New Measure, ed. Clive Bush
This list has been available on the Internet since October 1996, and some responses have been sent to me. Peter Smith suggested the inclusion of: Loquitur, by Basil Bunting; Logbook, by Denis Goacher; Deep Tap Tree, by Alexander Hutchison; and Masks, by E.R. Brathwaite. My personal additions are:
David Barnett, Fretwork; All the Year Round; Isobel Thrilling, Spectrum Shift; Tony Lopez, The English Disease; Change; Stress Management; Emyr Humphreys, Ancestor Worship; Tom Lowenstein, Filibustering in Samsara; Alexander Hutchison, Deep Tap Tree, The Mooncalf; Brian Marley, Springtime in the Rockies; Fower Brigs ti a Kinrik: four Fife Poets; David Wevill, A Christ of the Ice-Floes
I am still pondering works by: Caroline Bergvall (Oh Strange Passage and Oblique View of a Room in Motion are fine, but Eclat is very weak); Norman Jope; Elisabeth Bletsoe (too many weak points in her first two books); Chris Bendon (fine individual poems but his books are not good overall).
An extra rule needs to be voiced, i.e. that no-one established before 1950 has been considered. This simplifies the list; but the volume Poems 1942-67, by Alan Ross, should be added, as Ross was nothing like "established" in 1950. For fairness, I should just give a list of the good poets who were, according to my incomplete researches, at work in the 1950s: Francis Berry, FT Prince, Alan Ross, WS Graham, Glyn Jones, Geoffrey Hill, David Jones, Terence Tiller. Tiller is a problem; he produced one volume each in the 1960s and 1970s, and while these are not bad they are not compelling as whole books; his best work came earlier, in books of real importance which were mysteriously "disappeared" over the years, in the way familiar to students of these matters. Joseph Macleod published a book in 1971, but it does not impress me; anyone concerned should seek out his earlier work, flawed and overreaching though much of it is. Ian Hamilton Finlay is a vast and essentially poetic presence, which does not manifest itself as books; consult IHF A Visual Primer, by Yves Abrioux. The decisions to exclude a hundred or so other poets have been protracted, nerve-racking, exhausting, and full of reversals, like some illness or other. The material in the anthologies gives the reader the chance to compose a vastly different shopping-list.
Allen Fisher writes to suggest, for the seventies, the following: Anthony Barnett, Mud Settles; B. Catling, Pleiades in Nine; cris cheek, some of the 1970s work in A Present; Thomas A. Clark, some particular, or a few of the later small chapbooks; Andrew Crozier, Printed Circuits and Pleats; Roy Fisher, The Cut Pages and The Thing About Joe Sullivan; Veronica Forrest-Thomson, On the Periphery; Ulli Freer (U. Flamme) Links. Links; W.S. Graham, Implements in Their Places; Bill Griffiths, Cycles; Alan Halsey, Yearspace; Mark Hyatt, A Different Mercy; John James, A Letter from Sarah; R.F. Langley, Hem; Tom Leonard, Bunnit Husslin; Dick Miller, The ( ) on Whim; Eric Mottram, Local Movement; Doug Oliver, In the Cave of Suicession; F.T. Prince, Drypoint of the Hasidim; J.H. Prynne, Brass and Down Where Changed; Barry MacSweeney, Odes; Tom Raworth, Ace, and one of the earlier books; Denise Riley, Marxism for Infants; John Riley, Ways of Approaching, and some of his translations; Peter Riley, The Linear Journal; Iain Sinclair, Lud Heat; John Wilkinson, The Central Line; Asa Benveniste, Dense Lens; David Miller, The Caryatids.
Richard Caddel writes to suggest: Lee Harwood, The White Stones, The Sinking Colony, Monster Masks, Crossing the Frozen River; Gael Turnbull, A Trampoline, Scantlings, A Gathering of Poems; Eric Mottram, A Book of Herne, Selected Poems; Tony Baker, Scrins; Doug Oliver, Kind; Alan Halsey, Five Years Out, A Book of Robin Hood; Elaine Randell, Beyond All Other. The exclusion of these books was not accidental. Richard was also a bit vexed that his own book Uncertain Time was not included. ("White Stones" may be a mis-realisation for The White Room?) Also, J.H. Prynne, Brass, The Oval Window; John Riley's late work. Obviously, Brass was included in Poems 1982, which we have listed. Caddel also recommends Dense Lens (Brian Marley, one half by Asa Benveniste), Springtime in the Rockies (Marley), and Tony Jackson's poetry; valid choices, these are very interesting poets of whom I simply had not heard. (I confused Tony Jackson with Alan Jackson, a ghastly Scottish confessional hippie.) AE alleges that both Marley and the quality Jackson are very much école de Benveniste, but this is a recommendation.
David Kennedy writes to add: Maggie Hannan, Liar; Medbh McGuckian, Marconi's Cottage, The Flower Master; John Welch, Out Walking; Kim Taplin, Muniments; Michèle Roberts, The Mirror of the Mother; Psyche and the Hurricane; Lee Harwood, Crossing the Frozen River; Veronica Forest-Thomson, Collected Poems and Translations
Page(s) 137-140
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