What Where I See Poetry Now

I had to write this on my phone as I wait for a new laptop charger so soz

In the 1970s (but really as far back as the 50s and further still: dadaism and so on) there was an explosion of creativity narrated around individuals. I’m thinking of Bob Cobbing in London, Ian Hamilton Finley in Scotland, d.a.levy in America, bpNichol in Canada, Dom Houèdard on a global scale, with his connections to Ginsberg. Yes, all white men. Yes, all publicly straight besides dsh. This is the mainstream story. If there’s one commonality between them and their lesser known associates it's the move - charged by psychedelics and utopianism and new sexual modalities - towards language without restraints. “I've come to free the word,” declared Gysin, who would have known about the logos from the monks that schooled him. Nichol talked about collecting different creative models in Sons of Captain Poetry. A lot of this energy was carried unto death: for Nichol far too young but always graciously remembered, carried forth, by his descendants, by Derek Bealieu and Greg Betts and Penn Kemp and many others. In England, it seemed to dissipate after Cobbing passed away. Writers Forum fizzled out before others tried to steal the name, its kudos. England still had its strange poets, but they were different personality types to Cobbing. Maggie O’Sullivan was writing away, as was Reality Street. PC Fencott became an academic. Others did an Auden and fucked off to America. I'm not sure what Prynne was up to, but no one is really with the amount of stories about him. And there was a younger generation: Caroline Bergvall, Khaled Hakim… If a contemporary poetry had airtime at all, it seemed to be in any place but England. This isn't true tho - there were small presses, stories of pamphleteering, but the point I'm making is none of them were especially galvanised. Then, at some point after, my generation turned up: the mid 80s births, raised by people who were so used to a world where you could have two kids and a mortgage by the age of 25 that it, surely, would always be that way. Instead we graduated into a post- recession UK of zero hour contracts, bumbling Tories and the Obama/Steve Jobs era giving way to the current global proto-technocracy we find ourselves in. (Yes, proto. Things are going to get spicy, baby!!!) With the economic, and therefore health, challenges my generation of poets faced, we were delayed so much that poets younger than us caught up. Now we're all here together. But it wasn't all crying face emojis and GIFs. The proliferation of the internet meant the major awards and publishers, and the workshops in their shadows, could no longer gatekeep taste. I'm old enough to remember: this was a specifically UK problem. While POETRY Mag ran major features on contemporary visual poetry and conceptual writing, actual cunts were bickering over whether or not the recent TS Eliot prize winner’s sexuality was… I don't know. “Appropriate” I guess. The poets I came up with knew Zukovsky, Kathy Acker, Artaud, LeRoi Jones, John Ashbery, Dodie Bellamy, Sun Ra, Lyn Hejinian, Will Alexander, Fred Wah… If that seems like a nonsense, disconnected, list, you get the point. I did loads of drugs with Lyn Hejinian’s goddaughter in Bristol many years ago, but that's a story for another time. (And, no. We didn't fuck.) With so many clashing reference points, of course young poets had to find their own networks which, surprise surprise, was found on social media. Then the older poets who were there all along found us and yay happy days. This is the closest thing to nation-wide galvanisation the indie scene in the UK had since Cobbing. Sure there was Poem Brut but they were always off in their own little club as if everything had to be Poem Brut, ignoring any real sense of historicity and critical thinking with their fug of anti-intellectualism implying those of us with neurodivergence are incapable of thought. Neurodivergence may well link humankind biologically, but it sure as holy fuck doesn't link us culturally: there's socially acceptable behaviour and if you don't adhere to it you'll be killed. It’s made all the worse that everyone seems too scared to criticise them publicly. (Remember ladz: criticism = diversity ;)) The truth is the UK has always been a network of independent communities and groupings, which overlapped and faded in and out of each other. Arguably, in Prynne's case, iconoclasts included. There can be no totalising. As in it's impossible. Remember how gloriously useless the phrase British Poetry Revival was/is. None of this is to do with making poetry relevant. I'd hope we're pass that conversation now. Auden after Four Weddings and a Funeral, the spike of interest in verse after 9/11 and then the pandemic… Poets will, and do, overemphasise these examples to try and argue poetry could have populist appeal. I side with Bernstein: that poetry’s unpopularity frees it from itself. (Likewise Silliman: something to the effect of, “I don't write poems. I write poetry.”) So at our indie level diversity, in the sense of aesthetic imagination not identity politics, is a win. We did it. Go team!!! Now the pandemic is over and major/middling UK journals and presses have stopped contacting us, what are we to do? I'M SICK AND TIRED OF HOW POLITE UK POETRY IS PUT A FINGER UP YOUR ASSHOLES PEOPLE FFS Like with the freedom we have we can dick about, have fun, go harder, stranger… Mummy and daddy have abandoned us out of neglect and I just found the liquor… I think also we should do more events. Not me, I don't enjoy event planning, but you definitely should. I remember what UK poetry used to be like. IT SUCKED. Poets were still having conniptions over the cut up technique. There were as many nice encouraging individuals as there were pricks but I mean as an infrastructure it could blow me. Now it's dying along with the rest of what's left of the 20th century and you and me have had a lot of practice living without it.