Arcadian Rustbelt

Below is a set of replies from Harry Gilonis to questions previously published on this website. The directive here is to find what the poets think so that the prose accompanying the anthology does not shock/ annoy them beyond a certain threshhold value. Obviously, if only 1 of 23 poets (excl. the editors) responds, we don't disengage a clear image. Not at all! Do you have comments on the Intro? I have not seen anything formally thusly designated, so, erm, NO. I can comment on  The Leisure Complex of Discontent  which gesticulates towards such a thing... poets emerging 1980-95 I would avoid the phrase ‘Poets on the Underground’, if I were you... The anthology, alas, appeared in 1999 from Wesleyan University Press: eds. Richard Caddel and Peter Quartermain,  Other: British and Irish Poetry since 1970 . It contains three of your victims, and five more who should be, i.m.h.o.. of course, a third of the book, the ‘70s crew, are irrelevant to your concerns; and there’s a bit (not m

Further reading version in progress This is not a complete list and we recommend the British Library catalogue for anyone who wants to see every title. Don't Start me Talking is a book of interviews with poets. An essay on some of these poets is at http://angelexhaust.blogspot.com/2018/08 Nigel Wheale a large selected poems is Raw Skies (2006). An autobiographical account in Poets on Writing (1992). Rod Mengham Unsung was a large retrospective from Salt in 1996. Chance of a Storm came out from Carcanet in 2015. interview in Counter Texts magazine, 2018. Edited Equofinality magazine and edits the Equipage pamphlet series (120 titles to date). Adrian Clarke many books going back to Ghost Measure . Possession (2007) was a selected covering one decade. Excess Measures (2015). Millennial Shades and Three Papers includes theoretical statements. Was a founding editor of Angel Exhaust. Andrew Lawson We have little of his poetry to go on, since he withdrew from the sc

This project began with a session in the Museum Tavern, in 2015, with Simon Smith, where Simon announced the idea of the anthology. A long time has passed, and we are close to fruition. Almost all the poets have been contacted, and some of them have even said Yes. A long and fruitful phonecall with the publisher, on 5 March, has clarified the final form of the book. Confrontation with the projected cover price has obliged us to look more carefully at the extent, and a lot of the prose carefully written up over the past few years will have to be scrapped. One response to this: "so far it has been euphoric... wandering through a superstore and piling up 8 trolleys full of luxury goods...running people over... then you get to the check-out and realise your card limit is going to go BLINGG. what do you say... "look at all the things I DIDNT buy"." Frantic activity backstage... but it is clear that the project is close to its final form, of a book that you can hold in

Further on Rustbelt (AD) Few comments are coming in and people seem to prefer to discuss via email, which after all means that only one person is going to see it. I am going to display a few of these, anonymised. It has been suggested that we include Michael Blackburn. I admit to not knowing who he is. We will be looking at his poetry, although the book is probably closed by now. >>I missed the Paladin (1988). Remember buying a 2nd hand copy of Allen Fisher’s Stepping Out in somewhere like Bingley in 1992 or so and being utterly baffled. My epiphany came later, at the end of the 1990s. What you say elsewhere about the strain of containment in the Paladin is very true - there’s the black ghetto in there as well as the women's, and that’s what struck me most about it. << So, we talked about the 1988 ‘new british poetry’ as being a moment when the Underground was in the High Street, and so where there was, or could have been, an “official underground”. But, our inform

This is offered for comments; please bear in mind that the idea is only to show indicative moments, not to list n hundred small press publications. This is a version incorporating changes suggested to the original. Chronology Debuts of poets in the anthology are listed. (Or, designated debuts.) 1977 Rod Mengham, Beds and Scrapings . Geoff Ward, Tales from the Snowline . 1978-9 so-called “winter of discontent”, as low-paid workers try to defend themselves against inflation running at 20%. April 1979 election of Thatcher starting a Conservative administration destined to last until 1997. This is accompanied by an abundant output of New Right ideological polemics designed to attack and discredit every utterance of the Left. The goal is never clearly stated but may be something like the closure of every part of government and the removal of every constraint on the influence of capital. In line with the change of government, the media begin an intense attempt to “roll back” the cultu

Generalisations about the Thatcher Era This is part of an attempt to set up generalisations about the shared conditions of the Eighties – the public space surrounding poetry. The generalisations may seem crude, but the need is is for people to say yes or no, so that the generalisations can be confirmed or rejected. The idea is to get beyond individual experience – to reach something with fewer features but wider relevance. The introduction is built on these generalisations, as they stand, so if people clearly object to them the introduction will be changed. Please use the Comments feature to record disagreement or agreement. ('Eighties' runs up to 1993 or so in this case!) ** (1) The central feature of the Eighties was anxiety as the New Right put through policies which entailed immiseration and insecurity for the largest part of the population, while their lack of any restraint threatened an ever accelerating level of exploitation and exclusion. There was a specific neo-co