Sceptical as I am about anti-poetry, of which there is a lot around and which can assume many different forms, the fully formed poems are not the only writing I can value in a book like this. There is too much wit, absurdity, and sheer verbal craft to be ignored.
-Peter Riley We’ve all seen how, after a night of drones, an experimental poet comes out to read, wielding the vernacular, and the room lights up. There’s laughter, joy, play, confusion, a rmation, all the things that make poetry what it is. This is why poets in the generation including Duggan, Pam Brown and Ken Bolton are so accessible to readers and listeners, because of their interest in the page-as-field (perhaps an ‘Olsonesque’ sense), and the everyday vernacular. The only reason Conventional Verse Culture still claims to own the (ever-elusive) ‘average reader’ is because of the structures and frameworks in place that tell people they do. This is not because people on the street speak like CVC. -A J Carruthers