chrs hamilton-emery on one part of the uk avant garde

And the second thing I find fascinating is what I call Liberation Poetics,
the idea that poetry has been enslaved in some consumerist conspiracy,
and that leads to a kind of messianic quality in some work, and, as I've
remarked before, a lot in Keston's. This kind of poetry needs to be
outside, needs to be oppressed and needs to be secret. It can't
accommodate or mediate as it relies on an extreme position and in
many respects requires converts and acolytes, neophytes and indeed
some Grand Masters. It's religious in effect. One has to believe. Though
a key feature of the dogma is to express doubt, uncertainty and
incompleteness, just as it embraces process over product, openness
over closure and radicalism over restraint. It's chief weapon is excess.
And of course it is oppositional.

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