Strangely enough, an email arrived today from David Caddy, about the publication of his second So Here We Are: Poetic Letters From England. It's also available as a podcast.
It's excellent stuff, too, looking at another dialect poet, William Barnes, and the need for local distinctiveness. The stuff about Anglo-Saxon language is interesting too. I'm always willing to stand up for the Anglo-Saxons against the ill-effects of the Norman Conquest, but it's perhaps going a little too far here to equate one with libertarianism and the other with authoritarianism - however broadly true that is, there were plenty of elements of continuity pre- and post-1066. Still, it's probably no coincidence that the emergence of poets such as Barnes and Clare happened around the same time people were becoming aware that the pre-1066 period contained the roots of much that made the country what it was (and is), rather than being a dark age.
No comments:
Post a Comment