Legends of Warring Clans

Legends of Warring Clans

I have now put a revised edition of my book (of roughly 1999?) Legends of Warring Clans, subtitle “the poetry scene in the nineties” on scribd.com . The first edition was released on a website, alt.pinko, in 2003. It is mainly a collection of reviews, written at the time.

Poets discussed are Philip Toynbee, Geoffrey Hill, Isobel Thrilling, DS Marriott, Simon Smith, Andrew Lawson, David Rushmer, Nicholas Johnson, David Greenslade, Tim Atkins, Tim Allen, Andy Brown, Helen Macdonald, Rob MacKenzie, Norman Jope, Peter Finch, Tony Lopez, Kelvin Corcoran, Elisabeth Bartlett, David Barnett, RF Langley, Michael Haslam, Vittoria Vaughan, Peter Riley, Steve Sneyd, Kerry Sowerby, Elisabeth Bletsoe, Barry MacSweeney, Tom Raworth, Allen Fisher, Robert Sheppard, Nic Laight, NS Macias, Niall Quinn.

Also discussed are the anthologies Out of Everywhere, Purple and Green, and Conductors of Chaos.

I think I did much better with the time before 1990, so (in this series) from 1960 on. I didn’t understand the decade as I was living it, but the book represents me running around the landscape describing dozens of separate parts of it. At the time, I was editing a little magazine, reading lots of little magazines, and involved with new poetry every day. This lifestyle had to come to an end (when I found a job, indeed), but it was pretty intense for a few years. There were too many parts for it to resolve into a binding pattern until years later. Actually, the scene was evolving in several different directions, and this was the key. The book covers about 30 poets, but the time involved maybe 80 people producing excellent poetry, so the whole picture is intractably complex. I just feel that this volume is a step towards understanding.