Skip to main content

Ten

Tony Judt, who has died, would have had something to say about the new Bloodaxe anthology, Ten, edited by Daljit Nagra and Bernardine Evaristo - since it is an "identity" anthology - a selection of "multicultural" (in the UK case, Black and Asian) poets.  I haven't seen it yet, and want to.  It is, as all will agree, high time such poets were more widely published and celebrated.

The question remains, for the mainstream British poetry community, why such voices, such poets, tend to be marginal, special cases, requiring such a showcase - their own stage.  Of course, both Voice Recognition and Identity Parade included Black and Asian poets from Britain - and this book offers a satisfying trilogy for any shelf.  The woeful lack of interest in "multicultural" poets in the UK by many larger publishers has something to do with the conservative bent, the careful career-pruning, of some.  Tone and diction and intent are so important for English poetry, especially, that new registers and themes and ranges can be misread, or read accurately, as beyond the tonal limits.

"Good" English poetry is so often about restraint, about a drained verbal landscape.  Multicultural writing, to use that awkward term, and here I think Salman Rushdie is the exemplar, offers a rioutous hybrdity that by its very post-colonial and talk-back nature is rebarbative at times, and surely, "bad" in a good way - see the claims that Nagra was a "bad poet" in Arete magazine a few years back.  If Ten gets readers for these poets they didn't have before, that's the job done.  Might it be too much to hopethat future anthologies will be able to include such poets not because they have been marginal, but because they no longer are?

Comments

It would be really nice if people would support and celebrate the publishers that have already worked hard at bringing out collections by Black and Asian poets. Let's not forget that a good portion of the poets featured in the anthology are already published by Flipped Eye. Let's hope our existence isn't completely glossed over when the anthology comes out.

Popular posts from this blog

CLIVE WILMER'S THOM GUNN SELECTED POEMS IS A MUST-READ

THAT HANDSOME MAN  A PERSONAL BRIEF REVIEW BY TODD SWIFT I could lie and claim Larkin, Yeats , or Dylan Thomas most excited me as a young poet, or even Pound or FT Prince - but the truth be told, it was Thom Gunn I first and most loved when I was young. Precisely, I fell in love with his first two collections, written under a formalist, Elizabethan ( Fulke Greville mainly), Yvor Winters triad of influences - uniquely fused with an interest in homerotica, pop culture ( Brando, Elvis , motorcycles). His best poem 'On The Move' is oddly presented here without the quote that began it usually - Man, you gotta go - which I loved. Gunn was - and remains - so thrilling, to me at least, because so odd. His elegance, poise, and intelligence is all about display, about surface - but the surface of a panther, who ripples with strength beneath the skin. With Gunn, you dressed to have sex. Or so I thought.  Because I was queer (I maintain the right to lay claim to that

IQ AND THE POETS - ARE YOU SMART?

When you open your mouth to speak, are you smart?  A funny question from a great song, but also, a good one, when it comes to poets, and poetry. We tend to have a very ambiguous view of intelligence in poetry, one that I'd say is dysfunctional.  Basically, it goes like this: once you are safely dead, it no longer matters how smart you were.  For instance, Auden was smarter than Yeats , but most would still say Yeats is the finer poet; Eliot is clearly highly intelligent, but how much of Larkin 's work required a high IQ?  Meanwhile, poets while alive tend to be celebrated if they are deemed intelligent: Anne Carson, Geoffrey Hill , and Jorie Graham , are all, clearly, very intelligent people, aside from their work as poets.  But who reads Marianne Moore now, or Robert Lowell , smart poets? Or, Pound ?  How smart could Pound be with his madcap views? Less intelligent poets are often more popular.  John Betjeman was not a very smart poet, per se.  What do I mean by smart?

"I have crossed oceans of time to find you..."

In terms of great films about, and of, love, we have Vertigo, In The Mood for Love , and Casablanca , Doctor Zhivago , An Officer and a Gentleman , at the apex; as well as odder, more troubling versions, such as Sophie's Choice and  Silence of the Lambs .  I think my favourite remains Bram Stoker's Dracula , with the great immortal line "I have crossed oceans of time to find you...".