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A State of Independence
edited by Tony Frazer
(Stride Publications, Exeter, 1998)
A State of Independen
ce
Introduction
This book contains the work of 18 poets who have been active in the British Isles in recent years. Although the majority are British, the selection also includes two Irish poets, one Canadian and one Australian, all resident in Britain at various times in the recent past, as well as one expatriate Briton based in the USA. Whatever their location, all the selected poets are publishing—or have published—the majority of their work in British presses and journals.
This does not pretend to be an exhaustive survey of the poetry of the last couple of decades, and indeed some of the writers I wished to include declined to be involved. The selection covers figures who are well-known and published by major publishing houses, as well as others who will be new to the reader unless (s)he is a very attentive follower of the small-press scene in Britain. Small presses are typically independent in outlook, often provincial in location, and are invariably not regarded seriously by the cultural establishment in the capital. All of the poets here have been published at one time or another by such presses: Roy Fisher first reached a larger audience through Migrant and then the remarkable Fulcrum Press in the 1960s; Christopher Middleton—also published by Fulcrum in the late 60s—is now published by Carcanet of Manchester, a small press which "grew up". By contrast, Philip Jenkins' books have been so fugitive that they were and remain almost impossible to find.
If these poets are so worthy of attention, why is it that they are not all given the accolades accorded their more mainstream contemporaries? It may be that refusal to play the literary-political power game or not bothering to be a reviewer / reader / lecturer / biographer proves detrimental to a poetry "career" as it exists these days in Britain. Innovators of course—and some of those included here may justifiably claim that description—are always outside the canon, until such time as they are recognised as forgotten geniuses—as with Basil Bunting in Britain—or until the canon swivels about to accommodate them—as with John Ashbery in the USA (although his fecundity and intellectual playfulness still seem distrusted in Britain). No conspiracy, this, but simply the natural moves and countermoves made by political human beings, who seek comfort with their kin and the safety of their own walls rather than an exploration of the harsher country beyond.
Some of these more independent voices nonetheless break through to a kind of reluctant recognition, accompanied by puzzlement, particularly when the critical tools of the mainstream—which dominates those journals that seek to be arbiters of taste—fail to cope with the language, strategy, structure and style of the work in question: Middleton and Fisher in their different ways are cases in point—reviews of their work in mainstream journals have often shown a spectacular inability to engage it on the appropriate level, exemplified by attempts to "situate" the latter with Philip Larkin, on the dubious grounds that both demonstrate a sense of place.
The writers in this book represent no "school". They are here because I admire their work and enjoy reading it more than most that I find on the poetry shelves in bookshops and libraries these days. The unifying principles therefore—as must surely be the case in an anthology—are personal taste, likes and dislikes. I have a long-held love for singers, for shamans, for bards, for high-modernist collage and for terse lyrics à la Robert Creeley. I look for the kind of excitement that was first afforded me by Bunting's Briggflatts, Graham's Nightfishing, Snyder's Mountains and Rivers Without End, or by my first encounters with Robert Creeley and Gustaf Sobin. Some of the poets here I've been reading for nearly twenty-five years, others for no more than 18 months, but they all give me enjoyment, and give me pause.
There are obvious absences (some voluntary, as I have already noted), but some less obvious that may require explanation. Performance writing—a notable part of the alternative poetry scene—is not represented here, largely because I have not had the opportunity of experiencing it in performance & because I remain unconvinced by what I have seen of the printed variety. The loss is likely to be mine. Likewise, concrete poetry of any kind is unrepresented for the simple reason that its heyday would seem to have passed some time ago, notwithstanding the glorious exception of Ian Hamilton Finlay, who occupies a well-nigh unique position half way between literature and visual art.
This book could have been twice as long, and perhaps contained another dozen poets. It could also have been three or four times as long if I had decided to include anglophone poets from the USA, Canada, Australia, India and elsewhere. There is a job there for someone with large printing and permissions budgets, particularly if that someone is prepared to look beyond narrow definitions of what constitutes, or should constitute the current acceptable "canon". Anthologies in recent years have tended to be "official" or of the corrective "antidote" variety, such as this in part seeks to be: there is room for someone to draw the strands together.
©Tony Frazer, 1998.