View Single Post
  #17  
Unread 02-03-2019, 03:28 PM
Mark McDonnell Mark McDonnell is offline
Member
 
Join Date: May 2016
Location: Staffordshire, England
Posts: 4,420
Default

Hi Matt,

Well, I seem to have appointed myself 'defender of Dave', don't I? Sam, Jim, Michael, Claudia: jump in any time!

Ok.

Quote:
I wonder if an essay engaging with the subject of identity politics can avoid being political...Is art not part of the polis?
No, I don't think it can, in the small 'p' definition of politics as 'The principles relating to or inherent in a sphere or activity, especially when concerned with power and status' (OED) I didn't say the essay was entirely apolitical. I said (to Quincy) that I didn't think it was adversarial and obliged to 'nail its colours to a mast' and (to Julie) that I didn't think it had a 'political agenda'.

Quote:
I'd like to at least see the arguments being responded to clearly laid out and contextualised. Which version of the argument is the author responding to? Does it necessarily contradict the author's views on (non)identity, imagination and reading and so on?
I agree, actually, that the essay could be stronger on this. This survey of writers and artists on the topic of cultural appropriation reveals varied and nuanced opinions which can't be easily summarised as 'On the Left we often have writers saying they own their experience and no one else has the right to imagine experiences like theirs.'

In practice though there is less nuance, and the issue has been probably most visible in the story I referred to previously about The Nation.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/20...son-wee-how-to

This does strike me as more than just the kind of story that 'generates the most noise' as you put it, but one that did so for good reason. For such a prestigious magazine to bow to social media pressure and apologise for publishing a persona poem seems to set a disturbing precedent to me.

Quote:
"Is it really the case that diverse and minority voices are being excluded or silenced?". I googled and found this 2018 survey of (larger) British poetry magazines over a five-year period, which concludes that white and male poets are consistently over-represented in a number of major publications
Thanks for that. I really did want some data, rather than just a hunch. I learned

Quote:
Of the 19,993 poems in the data set, 9,185 (45.94%) were written by women and NB people.
Quote:
1,819 (9.1%) were written by poets of colour. Of these, 502 were published in a single magazine, Modern Poetry in Translation. Without it, the total drops to 1,317 (7.01%).
• At the 2011 census, 12.9% of the UK population identified as BAME.


These figures are not great, but not bad enough, I don't think, to constitute evidence of systematic exclusion or silencing. I suppose a true picture would have to also take into account the relative percentage of actual submissions by the groups quoted.

Quote:
Is the connection I see between these two paragraphs intended? These stories relate to "reverse discrimination" and to being "accused, justly or not, of bigotry".
Not sure I follow you here. Do you think I contradict myself in making these two points? But neither of the poets involved here 'made a lot of noise' about their supposed 'reverse discrimination'. Carlson Wee made a grovelling apology and what the other guy did was mercenary and tacky but proved some kind of point.

Quote:
What would a story about "minority poets being silenced or marginalised by white poets appropriating their experience" look like?
I don't know, because my point was I don't really think it's happening. The reverse of the story above I suppose: a Chinese poet writing a very 'English' poem and being rejected 40 times until they changed their name to Derek Smith?

Anyway. I enjoyed Dave's essay. It isn't the last word but I thought it thought-provoking and in good faith.

Cheers!

Edit: Hi Allen. Cross-posted.
Reply With Quote