Dennis Lewis
Dennis Lewis
THE LETTER THEY REFUSED TO PRINT
It is well accepted as fact that the conundrum currently occupying the greatest minds of our age is the elusive, yet fundamental problem of the Unified Theory ... the search for the one scientific theory that would explain everything in the Universe. But for me, that profound question pales in significance when compared to the thorny mystery of ... Literary Magazines. What the hell are they for?
Our small country is blessed with at least four magazines that would lay claim to the exalted prefix of 'literary'; all of them impregnators of the public's cultural ear, all of them massively subsidized by the much put upon tax-payer. So, naturally one would think that such publicly funded publications would welcome the opportunity of engaging in an important debate about the state of Welsh poetry. Right? Well ... no, wrong, actually. These particular magazines; these supposed hatcheries of the nation's cultural debates, these conduits of the country's literary erudition, these semantic rendezvous of impartiality and objectification, these privileged mediators of impassioned ink-slinging have all, for un-stated reasons, declined to engage in a serious literary debate.
Consider this remarkable (appalling?) fact ... a letter (an edited version of the letter appears below), meekly described by its author as a literary grenade, was sent to all four magazines by a friend of mine (okay, he's well known as an argumentative drunk; but even drunks are occasionally bang on the money as far as valid dissent is concerned.) All four of these magazines declined to publish the explosive missive. A dilatory oversight ... perhaps, an editorial lack of interest ... maybe? Or, perhaps more darkly, are we looking at a form of censorship born of vested interest? Yeah, I know ... that's just what we needed, right? Another conspiracy theory!
Now, there is no doubt that the said letter is inflamatory, derogatory even, but isn't that the point? Isn't that the very reason it should be published, to stimulate debate, to give the prosody-thirsty people of Wales the opportunity to refute the letter's premises, or support them? Criticism is never a very popular word (especially amongst us creative types), but amongst the literary movers and shakers, criticism seems to be the abusive equivalent of a head-butt in the face.
We have to ask ourselves the question: why has the once turgid pond of Welsh literary debate become so stilled? Hardly a ripple disturbs its limpid, self-regarding surface. Where are the danse macabre waters of variance and disharmony? Oiled over by the sluggish effluent of back-scratching self-interest and cliquey-ness? Who knows? Anyway, here's your chance to read the (unabridged) letter they refused to print ... see what you think.
Sholto. The Uncensored Letter
The following is an attempt at lobbing a cognitive grenade into the debate (of course there isn't one!) about the relevance of mainstream Welsh poetry to the nation's true aspirations. Our foremost poets are reputedly our country's visionaries, but the question is: are our fêted poets representative of the national voice; do these pampered prosodists have their fingers on the aphoristic pulse of the Welsh people as a whole?
It may be well be a result of the psychological maulings of this grey March weather; or (more likely) it may be the dramaturgical aftermath of a super-adult dose of alcohol ... but I can't help maundering over the representational fact, that the entire consecrated elite of Welsh poetic endeavour seems to comprise a fragrant, hand-wringing (watch them reading!) gaggle of white, middle-class, post-menopausal women.
My fellow Parnassians, I have no idea what that implausible fact (leitmotif?) tells us about the state of Welsh poetry; apart from generating a tinnitus-like effect in the ear (too much listening to Owen Sheers, more likely). But perhaps at the very least, the primacy of these (undoubtedly worthy) people at the very apex our country's poetic pantheon goes some way to explain the emasculation of our nation's versifying; with its contemplative piousness and chronic right-mindedness, its faint-heartedness and poker-faced ideography.
To whom are these poetic heroine's poems addressed ... the dear, the gentle, the pasteurized nonpareil? Meanwhile, the aggregate of Welsh people are hurting all the time; getting drunk, stoned, crazed and ghosted because the quotidian sky is constantly sharking down with its razor teeth and chomping them on the head. While most people are being fizzed and wasted by urban living, vivisected, reduced to tears of nausea and made virulently mad by the pace of 21st century living, what do they get from our literary chefs d'ouvre ... the girlish, the bright-eyed, the prissy lipped?
As far as poetry of consequence is concerned, I'm talking about the difference between an analogous sat-for portrait and a more natural un-posed for study: the difference between the self-conscious and the indiscretional, the highbrow and the uninhibited. Where are our injustice-profaning warrior women, our disreputable princesses fresh from the smarting pages of the Mabinogion; what menace has stilled the malcontent voices of our Celtic queens? (The primrose path of contentment, perhaps?)
What happened to perception, representation and truth? Most of the people I know are looking for a potential 'Eject' button, a sudden means of impelling themselves into an unthinking infinity. They're drinking tax-avoided booze and smoking tax-avoided fags, watching twenty-four hour Internet porn with dope-sloped eyes and wondering why they're afraid all the time. There is nothing coherent about life for them, nothing as seductively fixed or routine as a regular job. For them life is a fast-changing cartoon, a horror-comic strip of ridiculous fury and unimaginable rage. Lest we forget: the next generation of Welsh poets is being brought up on a rhapsodic diet of Goldie Looking Chain (get it? Rap...sodic? - Jesus, I'M WORKING MY ASS OFF HERE!)
For me, the poet who utters universal truths is invariably an angry poet (à la RS, Minhinnick, Twm Morris, et al.) Where, in our nation's poetic sensibility, is the sedition, the nonconformist hwl, the radical dismasting of soaring pretensions? What happened to the salubriousness of literary schism and considered dissent; who battles to question and confute our rhymester's declaratory irrelevance? Where is the indefatigable Glyndwr to challenge the prosodists Hudibrastic simpering and attitudinizing?
Poets of Wales! Put away your Rorschach vocabularies, and loosen your too-cosy ties with rueful rulers and politicians. Embrace the entire expansiveness of the enunciative Universe! Stop writing for an audience of one and refresh yourselves from the burbling springs of fraternization: tune in to the brain-fragging high-fidelity of an ENTIRE nation! Alas, perhaps it's a truism that the people get the politicians - and the poets - they deserve.
... and look, Doubtless I shall be rightly and justifiably accused of jealousy, sexism, literary impropriety, and even drunkenness for daring to illumine these insurrectional facts, (Hey buddy, the drinking is nobody's business but my own!) but come on, my fellow verbal conjurers ... come on! Doesn't it strike you as an ironic fact that our leading poets have all been institutionalised (dictionary: caused to become apathetic and routine) in some educational or political straightjacket? For the future of Welsh poetry ... WELSH POETS AWAKE! FREE YOURSELVES FROM YOUR PRAGMATIC SHACKLES! You have nothing to lose but your ... well, strappingly handsome salaries, I suppose. There is nothing more to say. Okay folks, the shrapnel has stopped whirring. You can come out now.
Oh, by the way, if my mate BOOMY had known that they wanted to decorate the overhanging belly of the Millennium Centre with some luminous graffiti, he'd have copped it for them for free. As an artistic paradigm of Welsh expressionism, I think it's fair to say that he is bitterly disappointed with The Poet's transcendental musing; he believes that 'E IS BRILL' is a million miles closer to the real coinage of modern Welsh aphorism than 'singing horizons'.
And while we're on the subject, am I the only one who thinks that the MC's copper-coated, horizon-expropriating roof looks like the humped back of a horny satyr, frantically screwing the living shit out of the virginal Senedd's glass and concrete fossa? Oh dear ... oh dear, dear.
Truly,
(Gaelic: Sower of seeds.)
the snowcapped daffodil bows
its quiescent head,
like a tame Poet before a Queen.
Dennis Lewis.