This thesis has been submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for a postgraduate degree (e.g. PhD, MPhil, DClinPsychol) at the University of Edinburgh. Please note the following terms and conditions of use: • This work is protected by copyright and other intellectual property rights, which are retained by the thesis author, unless otherwise stated. • A copy can be downloaded for personal non-commercial research or study, without prior permission or charge. • This thesis cannot be reproduced or quoted extensively from without first obtaining permission in writing from the author. • The content must not be changed in any way or sold commercially in any format or medium without the formal permission of the author. • When referring to this work, full bibliographic details including the author, title, awarding institution and date of the thesis must be given. Poetic Experiments and Trans-national Exchange: The Little Magazines Migrant (1959-1960) and Poor.Old.Tired.Horse. (1962-1967) Lila Matsumoto PhD English Literature University of Edinburgh 2013 Thesis Abstract Migrant (1959-1960) and Poor.Old.Tired.Horse.(1962-1967) were two little magazines edited respectively by British poets Gael Turnbull and Ian Hamilton Finlay. This thesis aims to explore the magazines’ contributions to the diversification of British poetry in the 1960s, via their commitment to trans- national exchange and publication of innovative poetries. My investigation is grounded on the premise that little magazines, as important but neglected socio- literary forms, provide a nuanced picture of literary history by revealing the shifting activities and associations between groups of writers and publishers. Drawing on Pierre Bourdieu and Pascale Casanova, I argue that Migrant and Poor.Old.Tired.Horse were exceptionally outward-looking publications bringing various kinds of poetic forms, both historical and contemporary, local and international, to new audiences, and creating literary networks in the process. A brief overview of the post-war British poetry scene up until 1967, and the role of little magazines within this period, will contextualize Turnbull’s and Finlay’s activities as editors and publishers. Migrant is examined as a documentation of Turnbull’s early years as a poet-publisher in Britain, Canada, and the US. I argue that Turnbull’s magazine is at once a manifestation of the literary friendships he forged, a negotiation of American poetic theories, and a formulation of a new British-American literary network. Identifying Charles Olson’s ‘Projective Verse’ manifesto as a particular influence on Turnbull, I examine aspects of Olson’s conceptualization of poetry as a dynamic process of unfolding in the content and ethos of Migrant. Finlay’s attitudes to internationalism and use of vernacular speech in poetry are compared to those of Hugh MacDiarmid to demonstrate that Poor.Old.Tired.Horse. emerged out of both a rejection and engagement with an older generation of Scottish writers. The content and organisation of the magazine, I argue, bear Finlay’s consideration of art as play. Drawing on Ludwig Wittgenstein’s positing of language as games, I examine the magazine as a series of playful procedures where a variety of formal experimentations were enacted. I verify that I composed this thesis which consists of my own work. It has not been submitted for any other degree or qualification. Lila Matsumoto Acknowledgements First and foremost I am grateful for the astute guidance of my supervisor Alex Thomson. For their generosity in sharing their time and information, I am indebted to Alec Finlay, Jill Turnbull, and Jessie Sheeler. Julie Johnstone, Greg Thomas, and Stewart Smith were incredibly helpful in sharing their knowledge about 1960s British poetry with me. Large doses of thanks are due to Pete McConville for his patience. I would like to dedicate this work to my parents and my brother Kaiya, who have always supported me from across the water. List of Illustrations Fig. 1 de Campos, Augusto, untitled, Poor.Old.Tired.Horse. 6 Fig. 2 Finlay, Ian Hamilton. ‘Semi-Idiotic Poem’, Poor.Old.Tired.Horse. 13 Fig. 3.1-3.10 Johnson, Ronald. ‘io and the ox-eye daisy’, Poor.Old.Tired.Horse. 19 Fig. 4 Johnson, Ronald, translations of Horace, Odes, Poor.Old.Tired.Horse. 11 Fig. 5 Lissitsky, El, ‘Layout for Mayakovsky’, Poor.Old.Tired.Horse. 8 Fig. 6 Apollinaire, Guillaume, et al., page from Poor.Old.Tired.Horse. 13 Fig. 7 Johnson, Ronald, from ‘More Sports and Divertissements’, Poor.Old.Tired.Horse. 13 Table of Contents Introduction 1 Chapter One – The British Poetry Scene, 1945-1967 12 Post-war Poetry Activity 14 Movement poetry and literary nationalism 18 Dominant literature 23 Experimental literature and lessons from abroad 25 Little (magazines) vs. (dominant) poetries 32 The 1960s and early 1970s: A Turn of the Tide 35 Chapter Two- Migrant: Social and historical contexts 39 A series of migrations: Turnbull in North America and Britain 40 The production of Migrant: Turnbull and Shayer 47 Migrant as social community 56 Chapter Three – Migrant and Projective Verse 63 Olson’s Projective Verse: Process, Breath, and Relation 70 Exploration of Projective Verse in Migrant 77 Expanding the field of poetics 89 Chapter Four – Poor.Old.Tired.Horse.: Social and historical contexts 91 POTH versus Lines Review 96 POTH’s internationalism 103 The Use of Vernacular Scots in POTH 121 Elitism, Openness, and Viability 133 Chapter Five – The Play Element in Poor.Old.Tired.Horse. 143 Language as games in POTH 147 The Approach to Form: Concrete and lyric poetry 155 Playful Avant-garde Precedents 173 Conclusion – Little magazines: ‘Re-tuning of the Receptive Organs’ 183 Appendix -- Contributors to Migrant and POTH 187 Bibliography 191 1 Introduction Migrant (1959-1960) and Poor.Old.Tired.Horse.1 (1962-1967) were two little magazines2 edited respectively by Scottish poets Gael Turnbull and Ian Hamilton Finlay. This thesis, situating its strategies of literary and cultural analysis within the methodologies of periodical studies, explores the ways in which these two little magazines enabled the development and circulation of diverse poetic practises. Advances in printing technology in the late 1950s and early 1960s allowed editors and small press operators to take full control of literary production with comparatively little monetary investment, and to print and disseminate work lying outside the interests of more established or well- known publishing channels. Both Turnbull and Finlay, I argue, engaged with the form of the little magazine to challenge tendencies of the British literary milieu during that period. In making visible alternative literary approaches and forms, in particular those from outside Britain, and in acting as transmitters of contemporary poetic activity, Migrant and POTH encouraged the formulation of new poetic approaches in Britain in the 1960s. The value of the little magazine in disclosing the development of literary movements is recognised by David Miller and Richard Price, who write in British Poetry Magazines 1914-2000 that little magazines ‘represent the ongoing, contemporary presentation and dissemination of the most innovative and exploratory writing of the day’.3 While it is doubtful as to whether all little 1 hitherto referred to as POTH 2 According to Frederick Hoffman, Charles Allen, and Carolyn Ulrike (The Little Magazine: A History and a Bibliography (1946)), the term ‘little magazines’ came to be widely used during World War II. They write: ‘What [‘little’] designated above everything else was a limited group of intelligent readers: to be such a reader one had to understand the aims of the particular schools of literature that the magazines represented’. For David Miller and Richard Price, the ‘little’-ness of the little magazine relates to its low print run for each issue; they concede, however, that ‘it can be difficult to say where a little magazine stops and a more commercial literary journal starts’, not least because circulation figures are difficult or impossible to determine for either kind of publication. Due to the amorphousness and even arbitrariness of the term ‘little magazine’, the classification must be negotiated on an individual publication basis. Generally speaking, however, ‘little magazine’ in this thesis relates specifically to poetry- related publications. The ‘little’-ness of Migrant and POTH. will be explored in the main body of the thesis. Frederick J. Hoffman, Charles Allen, and Carolyn Ulrich, The Little Magazine: A History and Bibliography (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1946), p. 3. David Miller and Richard Price, British Poetry Magazines 1914-2000: A History and Bibliography of Little Magazines (London: British Library and Oak Knoll, 2006), p. 9. 3 David Miller and Richard Price, p. xiii. 2 magazines succeed or indeed even hold aspirations in publishing ground- breaking literature, Miller and Price here illuminate an important aspect of magazines: little or not, they offer unique and contemporary insights into the literary work of a period and place. Conceptually situated between the newspaper and the bound book, magazines offer readers views of the literary, political, and social environment in the process of formulation, crystallization, and negotiation. In this way, little magazines as Migrant and POTH, beyond offering the reader individual poems, can be explored as spaces onto which artistic movements, publication patterns, literary alliances, and recurring aesthetic and/or ideological concerns of the period