Poetry Wars I & II

Archive Post from March 2008: Poetry Wars I and II: reblogging for fun in April 2014.

I'm reading Peter Barry's Poetry Wars: 'British Poetry of the 1970s and the Battle of Earls Court' this week, published by Salt. It's an absolutely excellent read and I highly recommend it for anyone even remotely interested in the politics of poetry, each page containing fresh hilarities and salacious gossip from the world of 1970s British poetry.

I'm still only partway through it so will probably blog about this again, once finished, but I couldn't resist a few juicy comments now.

Poetry Wars is not a linear read but a satisfying dip in and out read, as recommended by the author, who has constructed the book in several parts. First, you have the linear narrative of how, in the 1970s, the 'radicals' (i.e. those avant-gardists who consider themselves to have descended in a direct line from the gods of early modernism like Eliot and Pound) beat off the 'conservatives' (i.e. the poetic backlash against modernism, advocating a return to normalcy, traditional forms and cucumber sandwiches) to take over the Poetry Society London HQ, then situated in fading gentility in Earls Court. Then you have chapters devoted to various 'themes' connected to that - almost decade-long - battle, with further chapters at the back consisting of dated lists, relevant documents, explanations of terms etc.

Reading this book has clarified for me, in a matter of hours, the terrible enmity that still exists between these two main strands within British poetry. Taking the bulk of its material from Poetry Society and Arts Council archives, memoirs, personal statements, plus a full account of the Witt Panel investigation of the Poetry Society's operations in 1976 - think full-blown McCarthyism in Piccadilly! - this book details, often meticulously, who said what to whom and when. There's rather less discussion of 'why' than I would like, but I suppose these memories must still be raw enough in some people's minds for that question to be approached with delicate circumspection.

And it's not all one-sided. Although Peter Barry is firmly on the 'side' of the radicals, by his own admission, he has tried to present evidence and anecdote in as unbiased a manner as is possible with such difficult material, not trying to hide mistakes by his own party even as he highlights occasionally underhand actions by the more conservative element as they attempted to get back into power.

So here's a quick taster of life at the Poetry Society in the mid-70s, in a marvellous anecdote apparently related by Peter Finch:

'We're sitting in the White House, the hotel bar next to the Poetry Society in Earls Court Square. Criton Tomazos is standing on the mantel piece ripping bits out of a book and chanting. Bob [Cobbing] has drunk almost half a bottle of whiskey and is still standing, or leaning. Jennifer [Jennifer Pike, Cobbing's wife] arrives in her small car to take us home. The vehicle is full of boxes, papers and bits of equipment. We push Bob into the front seat but there's no room for me in the back. I climb onto the roof rack. We drive. Somehow we get back.'

More of this later.

You can buy 'Poetry Wars' online at Salt Publishing.

***

Poetry Wars PART II

Tucked out of sight of the snipers, safe for now under my duvet, I continue my reading of Peter Barry's highly dangerous Poetry Wars: British Poetry of the 1970s and the Battle of Earls Court. See previous post for full briefing.

March 13th 2008. Late evening. Skim-reading through Chapter Nine: Taking a Long View. Bombing less heavy tonight. Discussing possible reasons for the marginalisation of experimental poetry both then and now, Peter Barry writes from the quieter trenches of retrospection (pp.183-4):

'Part of the explanation, then, must lie in the specific social formation of avant-garde poets, and to some extent (to return to a point raised earlier) it concerns their attitude to publication, which is often very complex and contradictory, as frequently with avant-garde groups. Some variety of self-publication, in fact, has long been the norm for innovatory writing - it isn't an accident that T.S. Eliot first published The Waste Land in a magazine he was editing himself, or that Virginia and Leonard Woolf ran the Hogarth Press. By definition, almost, the quality of something new will not easily be recognised by major publishers, who must cater for an existing set of public tastes. But these existing public tastes are precisely what an avant-garde despises or distrusts ...

... In Liquid City (Reaktion, 1999), Iain Sinclair, en route to visit Eric Mottram [experimental poet and 1970s editor of Poetry Review during the running battles between what Peter Barry terms 'radicals' and 'conservatives' - JH] with photographer Marc Atkins, explains to Atkins who Mottram is and what he represents:

The names don't mean anything to Atkins. This is deleted history - Allen Fisher, Bill Griffiths, Barry MacSweeney, the heroes of the 'British Poetry Revival' - have been expunged from the record. Poetry is back where it belongs: in exile. In the provinces, the bunkers of academe. In madhouses, clinics and fragile sinecures.'

*

For more on avant poetry versus the mainstream, here's a discussion of some antithetically opposed contemporary anthologies.

ARCHIVE POST: These two posts were first published on Raw Light in March 2008.

EXTRACT from THE CELL (fiction)

OVERHEARD: an anthology of short stories edited by Jonathan Taylor

Last November, I had a short story called THE CELL published in OVERHEARD, an anthology of fiction intended to be read aloud. The anthology is edited by Jonathan Taylor and was published by Salt. It is available on Amazon UK and direct from Salt Publishing, and can also be ordered from bookshops.

It's a brilliant collection of stories, and I can thoroughly recommend it to everyone who likes short fiction. Other contributors include: Salman Rushdie, Hanif Kureishi, Ian McEwan, Blake Morrison, Louis De Bernières, Adele Parks, Kate Pullinger, Adam Roberts, Michelene Wandor, Vanessa Gebbie, Judith Allnatt, Jo Baker, David Belbin, Panos Karnezis, Gemma Seltzer, Ailsa Cox and Will Buckingham.

I enjoyed writing this short story so much - which is about the interior life of a female Egyptian hermit of the third century - that I'm considering expanding it into a novel. Considering. These things are never certain ...

Here's a short extract from THE CELL, where my female hermit, after 17 years living alone in the desert, dwells on the rare visits from her spiritual father, Macarius, who is the hermits' new Abba after the old one died.

I am never sure if these visits help or hinder my progress. I am glad of them, for sure; my soul leaps for joy at the sound of a human voice, and my foolish vanity enjoys Abba Macarius’ flattering attentions, however fleeting. But afterwards, in the long stillnesses of the night, I recall each word spoken and regret them all. My pride asserts itself after these visits. It presses vicious thorns deep into my flesh, making me imagine, dream, recast each meeting until it shows me to best advantage, the least worldly of our order, the most pious, the Abba’s favourite. Mostly though, peace falls from my mind and I begin to remember how it feels to be alive in the world. My desire increases and pains me. The struggle to cage it becomes harder, almost impossible to bear. Some days the lure of the shimmering, heat-haze horizon burns my eyes like the desert burns my feet through my sandals. It can take weeks for equilibrium to return, for will to exert itself over my dizzying desire. Yet even will can corrupt the unwary. For it is the individual will, not the will of God, to which the body bows.

By speaking I weaken myself. Silence is the narrow way.

The days stretch out in this manner, my conscience knocked this way and that. Following a visit, I keep the cell door closed during the cooler hours when walking outside would be possible, afraid of my own weakness. Gradually, the stirred air of my cell settles. The humble stone walls and floor are my own again. Soon I find myself able to pray without distraction, and begin to follow the prayer cycles and meditations Abba Macarius has recommended for such trials. I sit cross-legged for days on end, examining one solitary word of the Lord’s teaching until it becomes as vast and complex in my understanding as creation itself. At such miraculous times, I feel His presence so near to me, it seems incredible that almost three hundred years have passed since He gave His life for mankind.

Read more of this story in OVERHEARD.

Boudicca & Co relaunches as Kindle edition for just 86p!

'I was dashing from poem to poem, completely compelled.' Helena Nelson, Ambit magazine

Glorious news! 

My second poetry collection, Boudicca & Co, has been launched by Salt Publishing today in a Kindle edition. You don't need a Kindle ereader to buy it, you can download free software from that page for computer or laptop, Mac or PC, and read it on your normal screen.


The paperback is 9.99. The Kindle edition is only 0.86p!


Please help to support poetry on Kindle - still an undiscovered world for most readers - by buying this book for less than a pound, or a dollar if you're in the States, and sharing this link, letting others know that it's now available in a digital edition. 


Many thanks! Below are a few of the reviews and recommendations Boudicca & Co received on first publication in paperback.
*

'Jane Holland's Boudicca & Co is a book of adventurous, resonant inventions. As the title suggests, it offers a new view from the interior - of both country and psyche - in which history and geography are co-opted in effortless interplay. It's a work of synthesis, and of poetic and emotional maturity, in which Holland emerges as a true craftswoman, a supple and graceful thinker with an effortless grasp of line, at the heart of the English lyric tradition.'

Fiona Sampson, Editor of Poetry Review


'I reached the fourth section of the book, the Boudicca sequence, and everything went electric ... There's a touch of Vicki Feaver about the violence and the cool delight in blood and innards, but the work is quite distinctive ... I was dashing from poem to poem, completely compelled.'

Helena Nelson, Ambit 2007


'Extremely powerful and varied ... Holland has both the clarity for the reader and the mastery of language to say what she means in a way that makes the brain tingle with both shock and pleasure ... This collection is outstanding.'

Angela Topping, Stride Magazine


'... we need only compare Holland's work with the anti-war 'poetry' of Harold Pinter to gain some indication of how rich and rewarding her response to modern conflict is - by shifting methods towards the imaginative and narrative elements of poetry, rather than the rhetorical and political. In this sense, the 'Boudicca' sequence has a great deal in common with David Harsent's Legion, which represents a similar attempt by a non-combatant poet to engage intelligently with the realities of war. This is, frankly, an outstanding collection, and Holland, as a result, can now count herself amongst the front rank of contemporary British poets.'

Simon Turner, Gists and Piths, 2007

In her unconventional aspect, Boudicca is peculiarly modern, and there are moments in the sequence, where modern wars and conflicts appear to be invading the ancient story. In ‘'Last Stand'', the woods are ‘'thick / with sniper fire'’ and Romans beat the men with ‘'rifle butts''. By breaking with the historic period of the tale, Holland comments on the repetition of atrocities and war, as if Boudicca is looking forward to the suffering and dehumanisation of twentieth-century wars. 

Zoë Brigley in English Studies

Boudicca & Co. is a bold re-imagining of Britishness. Our contemporary England of Sunday roasts and cyberspace gives way to a wild and alien landscape, a place that Holland lays glinting before us “like a coin tossed in the sun / blunt-edged, foreign.” Steeped in myth and medieval poetry, this is a land of “ruins under rain,” hares, oaks, gargoyles and the Green Man. At the heart of it, embodying both Britain’s fierce beauty and its bloodied past, is Boudicca, and her voice is a startling achievement: modern, pitch-black, funny, and yet hauntingly lyrical. Jane Holland’s second collection is full of love and astonishment, a tribute to the resilience of women, to the power of literature, and, most of all, to: “England // my beleaguered sunken island.”

Poet, Clare Pollard

Feed Their Minds: Give Kids Poetry This Christmas

Everyone's hitting the shops this weekend, both online and on the High Street, to round up all those elusive Christmas presents. I've now bought, on the telephone, all my kids' major presents. (Shh, in case they're reading this over my shoulder.)

However, I like to feed their minds as well as cater for their sometimes unaccountable taste in leisure pursuits, so there will be BOOKS wrapped up under the tree as well - as there are every year in this household. We live by books here, and a few more never hurts!

Yet even those kids who prefer DVDs may find flicking through a little poetry book more fun than perhaps they imagined.

Especially if you buy NEW poetry for kids - not the old anthologies of lovely but antiquated Victorian verse that most people stumble across at some point and think, 'Ah - poetry for children!'

No, there is new, freshly-written poetry out there now for kids. Relevant, fun, and not always necessarily rude. Creative, and often stunning to read aloud. Memorable, witty, intelligent, sensitive poetry.

So, in between forking out for the gaming equipment and the Barbie doll accessories, pause a moment and think about buying a few smart and attractive stocking fillers as well - a few books of children's poetry from Salt Publishing.

These small books are brand-new, modern, aimed at a younger audience, and with fabulous colourful covers designed to entice kids.

And the poetry inside them is pretty fantastic too!

Try John Mole's All The Frogs and Angela Topping's beautiful The New Generation for starters.

Then there's Philip Gross, John Siddique, Phil Bowen, Robert Hull, Rupert Lloydell ...

And in the New Year, come back and let me know what your kids thought of them. This is how you seed a new generation of poets.

SALT: Just One More Book

These are lean times for publishers, and my own publishers, Salt, have put out an appeal for people to buy some of their books - just one, in fact, could make a difference. Sales have been greatly reduced in recent months, probably as a knock-on effect from the continuing recession, and they very much need people to buy some of their excellent wares.

You can read their Just One More book appeal here at the Salt blog, with a link to Amazon and the Book Depository, where I believe Salt prefer you to buy their books.

Other writers and bloggers are supporting the Just one Book campaign across the internet. Here's one example from Tom Vowler.

This appeal comes just as Salt announce a brand-new imprint called Embrace Books, to be edited by me. Embrace Books will publish romance ebooks in various categories; we plan to launch the first titles in Spring 2011.

Anyone who was thinking of submitting a category romance manuscript to Embrace Books (first 3 chapters and synopsis to jane AT saltpublishing.com), but is now uncertain, should understand two things.

1. Salt has weathered this kind of storm before, using precisely this kind of appeal to its readers.
2. Embrace Books is a new imprint, a digital fiction imprint, and will be run almost entirely separately from its parent company, Salt Publishing.

The poet Andrew Philip, on his blog Tonguefire, makes the valid point that independent publishers like Salt are vital, and that buying a book from them now, to help them keep afloat in this recession, is 'about you – the reader — and making sure that you continue to have the opportunity to expand your imaginative horizons in fresh and unexpected directions, directions increasingly denied you by the chain bookstores.'

I recommend Wena Poon's brand-new 'Alex y Robert', a brave and stunning novel about a woman who wants to be a matador, against all the odds. It's also a very beautiful looking book.

Support exciting, independently published fiction and buy Wena's novel ahead of the crowd here at Salt (not available from Amazon until its official launch in 2011).

Salt Publishing relaunches their website

Take a look at the new Salt site here.

Birmingham Poetry Reading: Tuesday, 20th October

'Surreal in the City'

Part of Birmingham Book Festival with Salt Publishing and Nine Arches Press poets.

Tuesday 20th October 2009 at 6.45pm, Birmingham Conservatoire, Birmingham.

Readings from Tom Chivers, Luke Kennard, Simon Turner and Matt Nunn.

Through their distinctive and bold poetry, these four poets re-imagine and re-interpret the digital age and the urban spaces in which we live. Their frequently surreal and wry poetry challenges language and poetic form to produce work that responds to the peculiarities of contemporary life and the ever-shifting landscapes it inhabits.

Tom Chivers’ first collection, How To Build A City, won the Crashaw Prize. He has also published a pamphlet, The Terrors , and is Associate Editor of literary journal Tears in the Fence.

Matt Nunn is a freelance writer and workshop leader. He is the co-editor of Under The Radar and Nine Arches Press and has just launched his third collection, Sounds in the Grass

Simon Turner’s collections include You Are Here, and Difficult Second Album, due out in 2010. His work has appeared in Tears in the Fence, The Wolf, and The London Magazine.

Luke Kennard is an award-winning poet, critic and dramatist. He won an Eric Gregory Award in 2005. His latest collection, The Migraine Hotel was published in 2009.

Unbelieveable, but true: tickets for this excellent event are FREE! But please reserve them in advance with the box office - just call 0121 303 2323

A Blending of Species

Another interesting link for you. (I do have thoughts of my own; I'm just not sharing them at the moment, as most are still at formation/thrashing-out stage.)

This link is to a blog entry from 2008 on David Morley's Warwick University blog - to which I may have linked before but no matter; this entry would repay a second or third visit - where David is describing the events at the Great Troubador Poetry Debate.

The key thing, however, is the less formal debate that follows in the Comments section, which makes for informative and often curious reading, and follows the train of thought expressed below:

David Morley wrote:

Outside is now becoming the new inside. One example: the gently whale-like appetite of Salt Publications – whose work and enterprise I think is totally welcome and good fun – has torn the nets between what we used to call the avant-grade, what we used to call the middle of the road, and what we used to call the mainstream. I think this blending of species is probably a good thing. Now we are different types of krill mixing about in the same space. Now we are all inside the whale, as Orwell would have it. Now we are all calling from the inside hoping to be heard on the outside. A new slightly enlarged small world, a convergence of alternative universes, but at least we have all become more visible and audible to each other.

Then read the Comments which follow. I have ideas of my own about this 'blending' of two different types of poetry - more on that anon.

Salt Blog Explosion

Salt Publishing has now rolled all its blogs into one page: read them here.

Salt Confidential is powering on with ideas for Christmas presents, hot-off-the-press news from the poetry frontline, and facts on fiction. I haven't posted any entries on Horizon Review since the summer though. Bad Jane!

Still, now that Horizon is about to launch its 3rd issue, the blog entries will rise again, dripping and steaming from the ... whatever that gooey stuff is under my feet.

The Big Salt Facebook Vote

Three posts in one day. I'm having a rush of blood!

I also forgot to mention the big Salt vote-fest on Facebook. What is the most important book Salt has ever published?

You'll need to login to Facebook (or register if you're not already in the system) in order to vote here.

SALT's Natural Habitat is Fast Disappearing ... Can You Save SALT?

Sorry about the sidebar overlap. Just click PLAY and the sidebar will be covered.



"Please go to www.saltpublishing.com and buy ONE BOOK today. Because we don't want to say goodbye to SALT PUBLISHING forever."

Just One Book!

My own publishers, Salt Publishing, as some of you may know, has hit some very hard times recently, due in part to discontinued grants from the Arts Council. This has happened to a number of publishers, both small and large, across the Uk, and probably worldwide too.

Earlier today Salt Publishing announced that all their forthcoming 2009 titles were to be axed, and only backlist titles would be available via Print on Demand. I was aware of the situation beforehand, and thought all was lost. I have since heard, however, that they are trying to save the 2009 list by a combination of methods. One substantial method is by encouraging people to buy books from Salt.

If you would like to help save the 2009 list, and possibly keep Salt Publishing financially viable into next year as well, please follow the suggestions below:

Here's how you can help us to save Salt.

JUST ONE BOOK

1. Please buy just one book, right now. We don't mind from where, you can buy it from us or from Amazon, your local shop or megastore, online or offline. If you buy just one book now, you'll help to save Salt. Timing is absolutely everything here. We need cash now to stay afloat. If you love literature, help keep it alive. All it takes is just one book sale. Go to our online store and help us keep going.

UK and International
Salt Shop

USA
Salt Shop USA


2. Share this note on your Facebook and MySpace profile. Tell your friends. If we can spread the word about our cash crisis, we can hopefully find more sales and save our literary publishing. Remember, it's just one book, that's all it takes to save us. Please do it now.

Ride the Word VII: March 25th 2009

I will be reading in London from my latest poetry collection Camper Van Blues later this month, when I drop in on the Resurrecting Knives tour special, an event which includes
Vincent De Souza reading from his eponymous April 2009 Salt poetry collection.

Here are the details of time, venue, date and the names of the other Salt Publishing writers reading alongside me that evening at Borders, Oxford Street.

Wednesday 25th March 2009
Borders Oxford St, 203-207 Oxford St, London W1D 2LE
7.00 - 9.15 pm FREE

Jay Merill
David Gaffney
Jane Holland
Mark Norfolk
Vincent De Souza
Scott Thurston

Plus special guests Brand magazine - Editor Nina Rapi

Joining Salt as a Commissioning Editor

Sorry to interrupt A Short Season of Other Poets in this abrupt manner, but the big news is finally out. I have skipped the usual publishing tradition of tea-making and dutiful licking of envelopes for five years, and am joining Salt Publishing as a Commissioning Editor.

You can find the full story on the Salt Confidential site.

For those eagerly awaiting a new poem, another poet will be up on Raw Light very shortly. Though there's a bit of a queue now, to be honest, and indeed I may have to say to any further hopefuls, 'Namore, thanks.'

A Short Season of ... No, wait, hold that thought

Would you like to rupture something vital laughing? Try this from probably the UK's fastest growing poetry publisher:

"The poems are simply a triumph of emulation and mimicry, yet they smack of professional banality. My god, Lionel, you must have workshopped them to death. If these poems had a soundtrack, Lionel, it would be Enya on Mogadon. If they were food they would be lard butties. They're stodgy. They're inert.

... I would rather stick forks in my eyes than read another line."

And more of the same, over at the crazy Salt blogosphere, right now, featuring Letters From Our Editor. More scurrilous than one of my own gently stinging ripostes on the Poets on Fire forum.

"Thank you so much for contacting me again on Facebook, it’s so convenient isn’t it? I’m sorry to have been unable to give you more positive feedback on your poems, if I may describe them as such."

Don't go there without protective goggles and a bowl for catching sputum.

"I think we’ll take something new on this year as long as it's young and Welsh ... Am I still guest of horror at Lumb Bank next month? I’ll see you there. Keep me a cadaver."

A Short Season of Other Poets: Katy Evans-Bush

No Strings

Let’s celebrate no
strings: those things
that tie you down,
bind you up,
attach you to
somebody who,
every time they move,
you jerk.
Let’s rejoice in no
knots tied: no eternity,
no double hitch; no
slip. No tangled webs,
no getting caught
in a loop,
nothing entwined.
When you talk
into your tin can, no one’s
at the other end.
There is no end
of the line, the rope.
No reins, no golden thread,
no tether, nobody
holding on,
or back, or forth,
or letting go.
No piece of ribbon,
no love letters,
nothing holding
your shoes together,
no moorings
or anchor, no leash,
no cord:
umbilical, silken,
or rip-

'No Strings' is an unpublished - until now! - poem from a poet friend of mine, Katy Evans-Bush, who has the rare distinction of being only the second poet ever to have stayed at my house for the weekend (and regretted it ever since, I imagine). (Since I know you're all itching to ask, the first ever poet to have stayed with me for the weekend was Peter Mortimer, of Iron Press fame, and he definitely regretted it!)

That's the cover of her debut poetry collection, Me and the Dead, above.

Born in New York City, no less, Katy has lived in London since she was 19. Her poetry and essays have been published on both sides of the Atlantic. She is a regular contributor to the Contemporary Poetry Review and writes the literary blog Baroque in Hackney. Her debut poetry collection, Me and the Dead, is published by Salt.

Katy E-B opens A Short Season of Other Poets on Raw Light. Other poets to be featured will remain a secret. Come back regularly to see who else will appear on these pages. Another poet - and poem - to follow very shortly!

Ride the Word: New Writing from Salt hits London

David Morley on Value, Poetry, and Krill

"If I hold up a ten pound note and a poem and I burn one then the other, how do we feel? Do we feel more about one of them because we recognise its value?"

This quotation is from poet David Morley's blog entry dated April 29th, which is an account of his recent reading with Fiona Sampson, Alan Brownjohn and Naomi Jaffa at the ever-marvellous Troubadour in London, accompanied by some lengthy and fascinating thoughts on the current British poetry scene.

"Outside is now becoming the new inside. One example: the gently whale-like appetite of Salt Publications – whose work and enterprise I think is totally welcome and good fun – has torn the nets between what we used to call the avant-garde, what we used to call the middle of the road, and what we used to call the mainstream. I think this blending of species is probably a good thing. Now we are different types of krill mixing about in the same space. Now we are all inside the whale, as Orwell would have it."

I can't top that kind of insight at the moment, so here's the link to David's blog and happy reading!

Horizon: the editor's blog

Since it's some months until the first issue of Horizon Review- due out this September - I thought it might be nice to keep people up-to-date with how the magazine is shaping up.

To that end, Chris Hamilton-Emery at Salt Publishing has created an editor's blog for me which I'll be hoping to update as regularly as possible.

I'll still be posting here on my personal writing blog, no worries there!

But if you're interested in the ins-and-outs of what it's like, putting together and launching a new online lit-mag, the editor's blog at Horizon Review might be worth the occasional look.

More Dispatches from the Poetry Wars

Tucked out of sight of the snipers, safe for now under my duvet, I continue my reading of Peter Barry's highly dangerous Poetry Wars: British Poetry of the 1970s and the Battle of Earls Court. See previous post for full briefing.

March 13th 2008. Late evening. Skim-reading through Chapter Nine: Taking a Long View. Bombing less heavy tonight. Discussing possible reasons for the marginalisation of experimental poetry both then and now, Peter Barry writes from the quieter trenches of retrospection (pp.183-4):

'Part of the explanation, then, must lie in the specific social formation of avant-garde poets, and to some extent (to return to a point raised earlier) it concerns their attitude to publication, which is often very complex and contradictory, as frequently with avant-garde groups. Some variety of self-publication, in fact, has long been the norm for innovatory writing - it isn't an accident that T.S. Eliot first published The Waste Land in a magazine he was editing himself, or that Virginia and Leonard Woolf ran the Hogarth Press. By definition, almost, the quality of something new will not easily be recognised by major publishers, who must cater for an existing set of public tastes. But these existing public tastes are precisely what an avant-garde despises or distrusts ...

... In Liquid City (Reaktion, 1999), Iain Sinclair, en route to visit Eric Mottram [experimental poet and 1970s editor of Poetry Review during the running battles between what Peter Barry terms 'radicals' and 'conservatives' - JH] with photographer Marc Atkins, explains to Atkins who Mottram is and what he represents:

The names don't mean anything to Atkins. This is deleted history - Allen Fisher, Bill Griffiths, Barry MacSweeney, the heroes of the 'British Poetry Revival' - have been expunged from the record. Poetry is back where it belongs: in exile. In the provinces, the bunkers of academe. In madhouses, clinics and fragile sinecures.'

*

For more on avant poetry versus the mainstream, here's a discussion of some antithetically opposed contemporary anthologies.