Afternerd
I would like to say a few words about the task of poets in the coming years. People are hungry for a satisfying relationship with themselves and mysticism. You could call it a 'thirst' (or 'mixed' metaphor) for oblivion. Poetry can be a bridge to a dead end; it can point to poetry. Poetry has a place (sic) and I have put it there. It is called Wessex. Wessex is nowhere and that's where poetry belongs. I feel proud to have done that to poetry. It was a very important and meaningful success on my part. In an early poem I wrote 'The answer to pomposity is being pompous. When spontaneity reaches a stalemate / vague abstraction begins.' I still believe that. Moreover, people are potentially and characteristically pompous. To live pompously we need to embrace vague abstractions and spout them pompously, despite the fact that people laugh at us, and we must welcome the fact that we are so challenged. It is a matter of being more important than the world around us. I believe that we need both obscurity and evasiveness in our poetry. It is not a matter of either, or of both, but a dialectical unity as a condition of one another. I am the leader of one of the leading poetry groups in the South of England. We are raising standards and as these brave beacons flutter on their poles we will develop excellence within our national poetry, no matter the cost, nor to whom.
Compendium Bookshops closure is sad. It had, though, lost its initial drive and energy by the end of the seventies. I would have run it differently. Even Nick Kimberley lacked my intelligence, humility and taste. After being ignored by the world around me my ego had an all too brief life. I have vivid memories of my first visit to Compendium in Munich 1936. There was to be the launch of the new edition of Angel Exhaust and a squadristi of blonde young men were due in from Cambridge. There was a great buzz. Totalitarian politics and literature, bourgeois ideals and hypocrisy filled the air. I was attracted by those firm bodies and realised that there must be a synthesis of ideal things and anal things if we were to know being. I recall how - whilst the Cambridge squadristi were reading - I picked up a copy of Bringing Up Better Boys, which I could see was a truly fascist text, and I slid it across the floor to the stern young mother sitting opposite me with her culturally clarified child. I thought, 'wean the young baby on this to improve the environment in the world around us.' Imagine my unexpected horror when the baby began to suck the paper book, slowly reducing it to wet pulp throughout the readings, much as the Cambridge first years did to Poesy. I was further unexpectedly shocked when the sister I had thought of as a sister approached me after the event and handed me the by now almost completely pulped book. "It's a girl," she said, with I thought a very meaningful look in her eye. Then she walked off, leaving the shop. I put the destroyed book, much as culture is vandalised by dumbing-down, under the elephant's-foot step and forgot about it. Those were the days. There was nostalgia in the air, even then. I salute Compendium, its shared fasci and visionary ideals - the firmly gripped staff of its staff - and I look forward to a future bright with the glint of west country sunlight on the finely written blade of my thought.
Finally, I would like to apologise unreservedly for my existence. It was not me it was my self that did a nasty poo with words. Oh dear, clarity crept in, I shall not let it in again. My self is very sorry now. It caused offence. It caused distress. I did not mean it, meant the best, but for what my self has said, and all the things that my self did, I would be as nice as this. I'm sorry now for what I did. I did not mean to slander you, for you are nice, in all ways sweet, it was your self I meant to dis. Apologetic? Not a bit.
Page(s) 71-72
magazine list
- Features
- zines
- 10th Muse
- 14
- Acumen
- Agenda
- Ambit
- Angel Exhaust
- ARTEMISpoetry
- Atlas
- Blithe Spirit
- Borderlines
- Brando's hat
- Brittle Star
- Candelabrum
- Cannon's Mouth, The
- Chroma
- Coffee House, The
- Dream Catcher
- Equinox
- Erbacce
- Fabric
- Fire
- Floating Bear, The
- French Literary Review, The
- Frogmore Papers, The
- Global Tapestry
- Grosseteste Review
- Homeless Diamonds
- Interpreter's House, The
- Iota
- Journal, The
- Lamport Court
- London Magazine, The
- Magma
- Matchbox
- Matter
- Modern Poetry in Translation
- Monkey Kettle
- Moodswing
- Neon Highway
- New Welsh Review
- North, The
- Oasis
- Obsessed with pipework
- Orbis
- Oxford Poetry
- Painted, spoken
- Paper, The
- Pen Pusher Magazine
- Poetry Cornwall
- Poetry London
- Poetry London (1951)
- Poetry Nation
- Poetry Review, The
- Poetry Salzburg Review
- Poetry Scotland
- Poetry Wales
- Private Tutor
- Purple Patch
- Quarto
- Rain Dog
- Reach Poetry
- Review, The
- Rialto, The
- Second Aeon
- Seventh Quarry, The
- Shearsman
- Smiths Knoll
- Smoke
- South
- Staple
- Strange Faeces
- Tabla Book of New Verse, The
- Thumbscrew
- Tolling Elves
- Ugly Tree, The
- Weyfarers
- Wolf, The
- Yellow Crane, The