new poetry and poetics edited by brian kim stefans - Arras.net

BKS: From my various communings either in person or electronically with writers
from England, it appears that few are very excited about the alternative poetry
scene over there, complaining of a lack of discourse, venues for presenting
one’s work or experiencing other’s, and the general disinterest in experimental
poetics. Tom Raworth is often proposed as the only one from the older generation
worth looking at, a position he has held, it seems, since the early eighties
when he was one of the few English writers American poets found innovative and
challenging. (J.H Prynne and Ian Hamilton Finlay each have their cult audiences,
but neither seems to have gained much of a presence, here). “Conductors
of Chaos” seemed to offer some very “alternative” style poetics, and to “rediscover”
some lost poets of generations past, but despite the various figures that could
be deemed forebears to a radical contemporary praxis, none seem to spark excitement
in quite the way that the Objectivist poets and figures like Jackson Mac
Low or Gertrude Stein, for example, did for the Language Poets. I always wondered
why writers like David Jones and Basil Bunting never produced much of
a “lineage” that could extend from their example (very different type of “experimental”
poetry, obviously).
Do you feel that, in general, writers of an “alternative” bent in England tend not
to affix themselves to “lineages” the way some American poets (addicts) do? Is
the “heroic” aspect of formal discovery and thematic innovation just not an element
in English literary culture (perhaps as a reaction to an American ethic
itself)? Do you feel part of a lineage – or, more importantly, do you feel there is
a sense among other poets your age that such an attempt to find something in
English modernism that can be developed – rather than honored yet isolated as
a freak occurrence – is important? Who do you look at in England (and who do
you wish would just write better)?
MC: I suppose the first thing that comes to mind to say is that, as you know, I
have a fair idea of which English poets (or poets resident in England) you are in
touch with, &, well, they simply are writers who, at least as I understand it/them,
have what might best be described as mixed feelings about the current scene here.
A different sampling of poets would paint a very different picture–that things
have never been better, for instance.
I think a sense of lineage of some sort is quite prevalent among some “alterna-