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Modern and Contemporary Poetry and Poetics Modern and Contemporary Poetry and Poetics Series Editor Rachel Blau DuPlessis Temple University Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA Modern and Contemporary Poetry and Poetics promotes and pursues topics in the burgeoning field of 20th and 21st century poetics. Critical and scholarly work on poetry and poetics of interest to the series includes social location in its relationships to subjectivity, to the construction of authorship, to oeuvres, and to careers; poetic reception and dissemination (groups, movements, formations, institutions); the intersection of poetry and theory; questions about language, poetic authority, and the goals of writing; claims in poetics, impacts of social life, and the dynamics of the poetic career as these are staged and debated by poets and inside poems. More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/14799 Luke Roberts Barry MacSweeney and the Politics of Post-War British Poetry Seditious Things Luke Roberts King’s College London London, United Kingdom Modern and Contemporary Poetry and Poetics ISBN 978-3-319-45957-8 ISBN 978-3-319-45958-5 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-45958-5 Library of Congress Control Number: 2017930177 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2017 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the pub- lisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institu- tional affiliations. Cover image © Gary Cook / Alamy Stock Photo Printed on acid-free paper This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by Springer Nature The registered company is Springer International Publishing AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland facts are seditious things Barry MacSweeney, Black Torch (1978) A NOTE On ARCHIVES anD SOURCES After his death in 2000, Barry MacSweeney’s personal library was donated to the University of Newcastle and housed in a dedicated room at the School of English. Since I spent time with this material in 2013, some of the contents has been removed and is no longer accessible to researchers. A handlist is still available. For reasons of method, I have, where possible, used the editions of secondary texts that were in MacSweeney’s library. When quoting from his inscriptions or annotations, I use the acronym ‘BMPL’ [Barry MacSweeney Personal Library]. When quoting from The English Intelligencer, I use the transcriptions to be found in Certain Prose of the English Intelligencer, edited by Neil Pattison, Reitha Pattison, and Luke Roberts (Cambridge: Mountain, 2012; 2nd rev. ed., 2014). In each case, details of publication are given in full in the bibliography. The divisions between series and individual issues of the Intelligencer differ in the sets held at different institutions. The copy I routinely consulted is held in the Cambridge University Library. MacSweeney spelled his name ‘McSweeney’ at this time. I have silently changed it. Materials from the Barry MacSweeney Papers, Robinson Library Special Collections, Newcastle University, are given with the catalogue reference ‘BM’, with folder and document number following. When referring to MacSweeney’s journalism, the material is drawn from his scrapbooks and portfolios held in this archive, and is indicated as such. Materials from the English Intelligencer Archive, Fales Library and Special Collections, New York University, are indicated by ‘TEI Archive’, with box and folder numbers following. The catalogue at Fales vii viii A NOTE ON ARCHIVES AND SOURCES lists MacSweeney’s contributions incorrectly, under the name ‘Brian McSweeney’. Materials from the Eric Mottram Archive, King’s College London, are given with the catalogue reference ‘Mottram’, with folder and contents numbers following. I consulted, though do not cite in this book, MacSweeney’s manu- scripts and notebooks held in the Sir Joseph Gold Literary Manuscript Collection, Special Collections, University of Delaware Library, Delaware. In the chapter ‘From Green Cabaret to Black Torch’ I examine two publications with the same title, The Boy from the Green Cabaret Tells of His Mother. To differentiate, ‘Cabaret’ refers to the sequence of thirteen poems circulated privately in 1967; Cabaret refers to the trade paperback issued by Hutchinson in 1968, which collected the title sequence and other poems. I have provided a separate bibliography for poetry magazines, political magazines, and political newspapers, giving details of the editors, place of publication, and duration of existence where known. Almost all of this material was consulted in the Cambridge University Library. This bibliog- raphy includes poetry magazines not directly mentioned in this study but in which MacSweeney published. ACKnOWLEDGEMEnTS My first debt of gratitude is to Rod Mengham, who supervised the doc- toral research this book is based on and whose encouragement over the years has been indispensable. Ian Patterson and Drew Milne offered helpful comments on early chapters, and John Kerrigan and Carol Watts did so for the whole book. Part of Chap. 3 was presented as a paper for the ‘Legacies of Modernism’ conference, Université Paris-Diderot, June 2011, and I thank Abigail Lang and David Nowell Smith for organising it, and the participants for their lively discussion. I was supported in my research by an award from the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), who also supplied me with a travel grant to visit archives in the USA. St John’s College and the Faculty of English, University of Cambridge, also gave me financial assistance. I conducted most of my research at the Cambridge University Library and the Robinson Library, Newcastle University. The staff and workers of both institutions were always helpful. At Palgrave, Rachel Blau DuPlessis, Paloma Yannakakis, and my anonymous readers provided advice and encouragement. I was glad to speak to and correspond with many of MacSweeney’s friends, acquaintances, and publishers, all of whom answered questions and helped me to locate materials and verify facts. The list is long: Neil Astley, Ian Brinton, Clive Bush, David Caddy, Andrew Duncan, Allen Fisher, John Hall, John Harvey, John James, the late Terry Kelly, Peter Manson, Maggie O’Sullivan, Tom Pickard, Connie Pickard, Robin Purves, J.H. Prynne, Tom Raworth, Peter Riley, the late Stephen Rodefer, William Rowe, Anthony Rudolf, John Temple, Tony Wild, and John Wilkinson. ix x ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Elaine Randell was particularly generous with her time; she has my sin- cere admiration. MacSweeney’s mother, the late Lillian McSweeney, was kind enough to correspond with me in 2011. I am immensely grateful to Barry MacSweeney’s brother, Paul, representing the Estate of Barry MacSweeney, for his generosity and enthusiasm. With my friends, some of whom I am happy to have already listed, I argued and talked about poetry and politics and much else besides. There are too many to mention, but I owe particular debts to: Sean Bonney, Eleanor Careless, Sara Crangle, Jackqueline Frost, Peter Gizzi, David Grundy, Owen Holland, Justin Katko, Laura Kilbride, Sam Ladkin, Joe Luna, Marianne Morris, Richard Owens, Reitha Pattison, Connie Scozzaro, Josh Stanley, Keston Sutherland, Amy Tobin, and Tomas Weber. I am especially glad for the long conversations I had with Neil Pattison throughout the writing of this book. His comments on an early draft of the whole manuscript were invaluable, and his friendship kept the whole thing going on more than one occasion. Finally, my family—my sister, Felicity; her partner, Matthew; and my par- ents, Mark and Daphne—provided all kinds of untiring support. Without them this work would never have been started, still less completed. COnTEnTS 1 Introduction: ‘Here We All Are to Greet You’ 1 2 Books, Devices, Verbal Chicanery, and Cosmological Range 17 3 Strikers with Poems: From Green Cabaret to Black Torch 51 4 Seeing and Being Seen: Serial Poetry and Surveillance, 1970–75 83 5 Into the Dangerous Decade: 1979–82 111 6 Class and Representation: From Wild Knitting to Hellhound Memos 139 7 Pearl on the Law 171 8 Conclusion: Nostalgia for the Future 201 xi xii Contents Bibliography 213 Index 233.
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