Tim -
I have to say that with a lot of British poetry, I have sometimes felt a kind of "plague on both your houses" feeling. There are some terrific poets who come from a modernist/avant garde perspective (Roy Fisher, Denise Riley, John James are three that spring to mind, but there are others.) But then there are quite a few who just annoy the hell out of me. Difficulty and allusiveness in poetry is not a bad thing, but one sometimes gets the feeling that the only reason someone is being difficult is that it's not like those mainstream people.
Then, I read another dose of defensive irony from a mainstream poet and suddenly I'm back to yawning again. Either that, or it follows trends: everything from Craig Raine's rent-a-sylable to Roddy Lumsden et al getting terribly laddish in the Poetry Review.
I think I'm rather inclined to those poets who jump the fences between the camps. John Hartley Williams, Charles Boyle, Martin Stannard, Ian MacMillan (when he isn't in Bradford City's Poet Laureate mode.)
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Steve Waling
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