Out of the crypt
and Into the vaults
Peter
Barry: Poetry
Wars
(Salt Publishing, Cambridge, 2006; paperback,
276pp, £16.99 / US$26.95; isbn 9781844712472)
Parahistory can be partly recovered by the disclosure
of previously repressed records. Deep history must attempt to reconstruct
what happened in areas where there are few if any records at all.
— Peter Dale Scott, 'Deep Politics III'
The story is how Eric Mottram edited Poetry
Review for six years and
excluded the mainstream, how a radical slate was elected to the Council
of the Poetry Society, how opposition polarised and burst out into a
public row, how the Arts Council as major funder raised questions about
the management of the Society, and how climactically 14 Council members
resigned at one meeting in March 1977. New editors took over, and the
Underground went underground again. There followed a period of calm and
prosperity for the magazine and the Society.
There are several ways of reading this story. One is of a heroic band
of brothers to whom destiny had imparted a special charge of bringing
about The Future, being absurdly betrayed and snagged by cultural reactionaries,
with the consequence that an avid audience was deprived of real poetry
forever after. Another is of hopeful and innocent poetry fans baffled
by the obscurity and apparent blankness of the poetry on offer, or alienated
by the arrogance and narrowness being upheld. These fans were saved by
the graceful exit of the culprits and were very happy with the cleaned-up
landscape, which was The Future and filled with hundreds of other poets.
We don't have to swallow either of these stories.
There was a close-knit clique around King's College, London and the
Poetry Centre (the bar and print shop), who were also a small subset
of the modern-style poets in the country. Professor Barry was a student
of Mottram at King's, edited a magazine (Alembic) which ran on exclusively
Mottramite lines, and has close associations with most of that clique.
Eric Homberger describes the English poetry scene since 1974 or so as
balkanized — the landscape is split by horizons, beyond which no
light, no sound, flows. Where the fear of losing is a fear of being shut
out of the future, ordinary poetic chat is replaced by disinformation.
Barry is making visible the horizon between the British Poetry Revival
(BPR), a wave of poets who from 1960 on rejected English convention,
and the conventional or mainstream poets. He presents this as still the
major division within English poetry. The rows of 1976-7 were caused
by deep artistic disagreements which, therefore, existed before the rows.
We are not given reasons to think that the rows altered the landscape.
The reasons for the balkanisation of poetry must be sought elsewhere.
You may well ask if this boardroom struggle for control of an institution
is part of the history of poetry.
My artistic breakthrough was happening just at the time of these events,
in 1977. They meant nothing to me. But they turned up the volume on loyalty
and loathing. After a painful lag, I realised that some moves within
the poem made some people write me off as a 'rebel and loser', while
others made other people reject me as 'bourgeois and compromised'. A
cultural struggle had invaded the world of signs. Any social ideal is
likely to involve a diet — eliminating certain people. Aesthetic
experience prefers an ideal state of harmony. Someone who dissents is
likely to be expelled. Collusion makes the invisible mightier than the
visible, and thrives on exclusion. Most people in the poetry world have
a strong sense of where they shouldn't be. If you have that feeling,
you should probably do what it says. But if we are trying to explain
the scene we have to see the divisions.
Group boundaries may seize stylistic markers, entering
the way the poem is written; they become loyalty tests, affecting
the way it is read. The poem stops being a functional lump of information
and is taken over by gestures towards ideals — of freedom, or orderliness — or
towards a group and its ideal group process. So the poem becomes
much richer in data — which may be trapped in the pipes of the
code. How would you go about reconciliation? video'd decommissioning
of ten 60s sound-poets? controlled detonation of Don Paterson?
Relations of the Poetry Society with the Arts Council (actually, one
officer) broke down in 1973. Almost four years of insecurity and tension
followed, making routine decisions stressful. Resignation was a reasonable
way out, although what felt like martyrdom was banal, the everyday lot
of the arts worker. "But you don't love me like I love myself!" That's
right.
Is it good to cut out these struggles for self-realisation from poetry?
No, surely they are what could appeal to a huge audience, dramatising
the struggles for autonomy of individuals maturing into a society with
no ideological core. In the story on view, the sense of martyrdom seems
actually to be a symptom of immaturity. The conflict of styles is the
most fascinating thing in poetry.
If it was a war, the weapon of choice was character assassination.
Dead light seeps through the horizon and gives rise to poisoned information.
Disagreement on basic facts has made discussion of the events fruitless
and contentious. The book is presented as based on the documents
and reprints 11 pages of them as evidence. The allure of a public debate
over a common event is that, for once, the parties may talk about
the same thing, rather than sticking to areas chosen to suit their attitudes.
Where hostility is fed by fantasy, recovering the truth can bring
the small but riven poetry world closer together. The reactions to 20
controversial Mottram-edited issues of the national flagship Poetry
Review embodied
the whole structure of the field, but nobody recorded those reactions.
Poetry Wars in no way gives a glimpse of the whole. Almost all
the poetic process is personal, private, invisible, volatile. It is not
there in the documents. One has to ask: what documents? whose voice?
whose archive? Barry's decision not to do any interviews for information
gathering is baffling. However, as a former insider in one faction who
no longer shares their opinions on everything, he is a first-rate witness.
Thinking of an ideal poem is close to writing an ideal poem. The gap
is small. Consequently, thinking about an ideal poem is benign for all
of us. If you have 1,000 poets writing at one time, they can't all write
the same poem. Consequently, speculation about new kinds of poem is benign
and reduces rivalry.
A chapter analyses the creative ideas of Mottram. Mottram had a genius
for persuading people they could live in these ideals without starving
to death. Moving in this new territory is terrifying because you are
walking on thin air. These were the keys to a new world for poetry and
you can live there — the books now exist. The frontier is where
the great fortunes are made. You go into the high state to bring something
back which can be read back by other people.
The remark (p.2) how Poetry Review had
'declined in the 50s and 60s into a state of settled mediocrity' needs
qualifying. I picked up an issue from a stall (61/3) which had lots of
visual poetry, including Mallarmé and
Ho Chi Minh, a prison poem written in the Bronze Age 'oracle bone'
style script. This is before Mottram got there. Surely this is interesting
and unconventional? In 1970, Ho was trying to overthrow the West.
PR changed with the poetry audience to become more liberal and artistic.
Between 1967 and 1977, most branches of art were revolutionised — with
or without Mottram.
One of the irritations was that Mottram, a prose writer of genius, got
rid of book reviews. This proud rejection of explanation may explain
why so few people know anything about modern-style British poetry. Poetry
Review had previously been rather good at reviews of new poetry. Is there
any link between total group solidarity and writing poetry which is incomprehensible
to anyone except the poet's fellow-travellers? And, upholding theories
on the basis of illuministic inspiration rather than the collection of
evidence or discussion with independent judges?
Although this was a clash of ideals, only the ideas of
one side get discussed. Further, the focal area is cut to leave
out the artistic goals being pursued by Literature Officer, Charles Osborne — since,
as we are told, Osborne has his version of events on record. Thus
the winners are not allowed on stage. While limiting himself to a brief
account of the artistic side of the BPR, Barry says even less about the
mainstream. Has any notable poet emerged from the mainstream in the past
25 (alt. 50) years? His book is not about the clash of ideas.
The taxonomy of the British Poetry Revival offered is not persuasive.
Mottram (issue 66/1) said that the 94 British poets published in PR in
his editorship, the 32 poets in the 1974 event for which Eric defined
the BPR, and the poets reading at the National Poetry Centre 'over the
past three or four years' were the core of the British Poetry Revival.
This is a human wave. The last issue of Second Aeon, in 1974, lists 400
new Underground publications. So many poets cannot possibly have any
shared characteristics. Barry's use of terminology slides into equivocation
here; he says 'BPR' but writes as if what he meant was a residual London
hard core. In poetry as in a city, points on the periphery are further
away from each other than each is from the centre. The new poets diverged
but did not converge. Barry sets out to find shared characteristics and
unfortunately finds them. The poets selected to highlight are Carlyle
Reedy and Robert Sheppard — surely a tactical error. This work
will not sway the uncommitted.
There is a moment of insight where Barry pp.164-6 describes the amazing
filth and chaos at the Poetry Centre, the preoccupation with being drunk,
the disorder, and makes a connection between this and the way the London
boys wrote poetry. This surely is a big line of difference between them
and the mainstream: the attitude towards neatness, tidiness, verbal smoothness.
The Reichian equation between splashing bodily fluids and printer's ink
in unaligned type is unambiguous. If you want to revive the scene of
1975, when the Radical Slate was busy making enemies, you have to imagine
Nuttall, Pickard, and Barry MacSweeney as the leading lights, and their
back-ups being falling down drunk all the time. And regarding any form
of good manners as Bourgeois Repression. The Arts Council's version is
that their interest in the internal affairs of this major client was
aroused by the noise of protest against the policy of the committee,
and of Poetry Review, emanating from groups formed specially to make
those protests. Hmmm. How badly do you have to offend readers in order
to make them form groups to protest against you? Maybe most of the audience
like conventional poems?
Barry claims at p.119 and p.187 that the London Group
represents radical radicalism while the Cambridge group represents
conservative radicalism. I don't believe this, but it does expose one
of the games on the field. I think this one-upmanship is mainly linguistic — Cambridge
poetry is discursive, not yibble, spatter, and scrawl. (Was that
a record by Bill Haley?)
The legend then would be roughly, "this poetry would
be very very popular if it hadn't been pushed off stage by networking
conservative arts managers." This raises two deep questions. The
first is about prejudice, integrity, objectivity, and malice. Was
modern-style poetry nobbled by managers for political motives,
ignoring artistic merits? This leads on to a broad, if less deep, question:
would the advanced style of English poetry have thousands of readers,
in fact a broad general readership, if it had been given fair exposure
since 1977 in the way that, say, the ICA has exhibited unconventional
visual art? I can't answer the second question. The first is slightly
more tractable. All commentators are supposed to form and express opinions.
Where lifestyle is part of the package, they are obliged to form opinions
on lifestyles as well. Rejection of the aura/clothing/perfume of the
progressive poet by conservative critics was thus not a breach of the
rules. I cannot now imagine how people could respond to a poem without
reacting to the person/life/customs portrayed in the poem. You can't
claim that Charles Osborne, Ian Hamilton, Anthony Thwaite, C.B. Cox,
secretly enjoyed poetry by Jeff Nuttall and Lee Harwood, but pretended
not to. Clearly, they didn't enjoy it at all. So why should we accuse
them of lacking integrity? But I am happy to accuse them of conservatism.
So why were they were employed as managers of new poetry?
Something Barry sheds light on is the alleged unpopularity of Eric's
Poetry Review. Actually, it seems that sales did not crash. The disaster
of the modern poets was after that — and due to the failure of
the talent around Mottram to organise a successor magazine. Annoying
large swathes of the poetry audience is not the same as being unpopular.
I get picked up in the book for saying that the membership of the Poetry
Society crashed during Mottram's editorship. This evidently isn't true.
I was told this by someone who was in a good position to know, but the
documents don't support it. The paid employees deeply hated the Radical
Slate, and that is the source of disinformation. So, mea culpa. I was
wrong. The major new fact in the book is the discussion (p.111) of an
alternative Poetry Review, to be launched after Eric was kicked out of
the original one. It is credible (p.100) that the mass resignation from
the Council of the Poetry Society was predicated on a triumphal entry
into a new magazine and new situation of authority. There is a big story
here of something that didn't happen. This could have been the most important
shared publication of the era. Barry is very clear about the series of
political mistakes made by the Radical Slate, which will hardly come
as news to anybody.
Projective identification naturalises any role and makes
the cultural field invisible to those caught inside it. The divergences
within the poetry are safely and abidingly linked to divergences within
society and its culturally active members. I do not think you can ascribe
them to flaws of character, irresponsible dissent, etc. Nor do I think
they are mistakes by the system. However, as the earth cools we can look
back at events — of the 70s, for example — and at loyalty
groups we do not belong to, and reach non-partisan judgements. Behind
the barren history of committees we perceive a middle tier of human habits
and desires, behind which grand ideas can be dimly detected. This middle
tier is filled with people, rather than ideas, and concrete and personal
impulses, such as loyalty, envy, attraction. These are not free individual
choices but follow the silent rules of which all cultural acts are fulfillments,
which are highly structured, which belong to no individual. These rules
changed very rapidly in the 1970s and the idea of continuity and legacy
from then to now is questionable. The field is bigger than any of the
individuals within it, but any moves can be seen as related to the whole
field.
There is almost no data in the poetic realm that is not
about people. The contents of the field are, essentially, a number
of people — maybe
1000 active ones. The flow in the field is images of those people.
But two observers can have vitally different images of the same
person. This intense investment arises because sharing is necessary,
and it makes communication impossible. Prejudice abridges civil
rights owned by individuals, and which they may vindicate. There
is a question of ethics in how someone exercising an office — including
reviewers and editors — has
to depolarise and try to glimpse the whole. Poets write poems,
almost, to refute what other people assert of them. Sometimes we
can hear them as dialogue. The question of fairness is too vital
to be given up. This is a very fair book. Clearly, it is wise to
test your opinions, to do the research, to be conciliatory. I recently
read Anthony Thwaite's poetry, and I thought it was very good.
He is a better poet, in my view, than Jeff Nuttall or Bill Griffiths.
I wouldn't know this if I hadn't read him. If you take advice from
your friends, you should beware of sinking into a clique where
everyone has the same ideas all the time. Fairness may mean literally
being easy about who you drink with. Leaving your niche to be passive
and fair feels like being depersonalised and depressed. It is just
not compatible with feeling vivid and directed. reading poetry
starts to be a job. But, we have already said this, being fair
is important. Between caricature and self love, a third image is
possible, a judicious one. It is reached by strain, and endures
protest.
It is quite normal to direct one's personal consumption (and what one
ignores) on the basis of superficial stylistic criteria, but this quick
fix becomes intolerable when applied by critics and editors. What I would
condemn is the use of rapid predictors that don't predict — the
obedience to prejudice as if it were taste and knowledge. The problem
with factional dramas and quarrels over shared space is that they inculcate
the use of these rapid predictors, make them fluent and unconscious.
Cultural history can only be written by someone who has read the poetry
of both sides (or, sides 3 up to 10) and for whom unconscious decisions
become conscious.
That staggering belief that "we are the future and we're here now" can
provoke astounding over-achievement, breathtaking arrogance, devastating
loss of proportion, inhibition of normal artistic impulses, colonialist
arrogance towards less privileged poetic groups, outright denial of the
evidence, greatness against all odds and records. It may be incompatible
with managing a national society with a broad range, by age and artistic
inclination, of members. Into which the Arts Council can pour money.
We may well think that the stimulus of rejection is what brings about
the wonderful energies of self-consciousness and exploration inside great
modern poetry. One of the silent rules seems to be that great poets cannot
be popular. Another seems to be that great editors end up not having
anything to edit. Nobody would claim that the future Eric foresaw was
interchangeable with the future, as it actually happened. Over the years,
each side can claim to have a legacy in the poetry of 1977-2005. The
old English society died, and to escape the big chill poets apparently
had to choose one of 3 (or 5, or 9?) paths, and move out of sight of
poets on other orbits. The loss of communications brought about the utterly
fragmented poetic landscape which we now see around us. And leaders claim
to own those paths. Whose future is the one we have? This is vital, because
most of the readers of the 70s, and most of the excelling poets, could
be claimed by both sides. If Cobbing could own everything radical, the
opera fan Charles Osborne could own everything lucid, melodic and lyric.
Poetry has thrived in the atmosphere, freer and richer in ideas after
the changes of 1967-77, while the Mottram group has been almost invisible.
Maybe the 1977 fuss had no influence on the way poetry has been written
over the 25 years? has no explanatory value at all?
Copyright © Andrew Duncan, 2006.
