Arcadian Rustbelt is a restitutive attempt to answer the question: Was there a second generation of the English poetic underground? All too often the answer has taken the form of the comforting Cambridge-centric myth that meaningful activity ceased at some point between the lost battle for the soul of the Poetry Society at Earl’s Court in 1977 and the election of Margaret Thatcher in 1979, followed by a poetic Ice Age that dragged on until the latter half of the 1990s and the advent of Barque and CCCP.
Rolling back the Motion/Morrison-Poetry Review-Faber clampdown, Arcadian Rustbelt operates on the principle that ‘if you’re indicted, you’re invited’, collecting formally innovative and radical poets who emerged after 1980 but before 1994: David Annwn, Michael Ayres, Elisabeth Bletsoe, Adrian Clarke, Kelvin Corcoran, Ian Davidson, Andrew Duncan, Harry Gilonis, John Goodby, Paul Green, Khaled Hakim, Graham Hartill, Nicki Jackowska, Keith Jafrate, Elizabeth James, Daniel Lane, Andrew Lawson, D.S. Marriott, Anthony Mellors, Rod Mengham, Kevin Nolan, Val Pancucci, Frances Presley, David Rees, Robert Sheppard, Simon Smith, Vittoria Vaughan, and Nigel Wheale. Such chronological parameters are inevitably a tad crude, as the editors understand, but necessary; and the quantity and quality of the poetry on show gives a resoundingly affirmative answer to the opening gambit of their question. In doing so they recover an whole era – roughly, of underground poets born between 1950 and 1963.
The scope of the material reflects an intimate knowledge of the scene at the time, and revisits the finest moments of magazines such as Equofinality, Angel Exhaust, Odyssey, fragmente and Grille. As well as its 289 pages of poetry, Arcadian Rustbelt includes blip biogs for each author, plus prose statements by six of the poets, giving additional granular context. It includes poets who died, emigrated, or left the poetry business altogether. Looking at the evidence as set out here it may seem strange how a fixed picture can form and become the surface of repression, hiding everything that is beneath it, or lateral to it. But any surface can break.
