Basil Bunting and Eric Mottram

Abstract

The Eric Mottram Archive was formed as recently as 1996, with the gift from the Mottram family to King's College London of the papers and books of the late Eric Mottram, Professor of English and American Literature at King's, and a well-known visiting lecturer at many American universities. His archive is a considerable one, including little-press material, books, tape cassettes, records, posters, photographs, and a considerable typescript and manuscript correspondence. Over the two-year period 1997-1999, a catalogue of this material is being constructed, and a strong series of files of material on modern authors, especially modern American poets, has emerged as central to the archive. This includes writers such as Allen Ginsberg, Michael McClure, Robert Duncan, and on the prose side William Burroughs of course, but there are also admirable groups of material on English writers like Basil Bunting, Tom Pickard, Hugh MacDiarmid, Jeff Nuttall, Allen Fisher, and many another whom Eric came across in his activities as writer, reader, editor and organizer of poetry events, in Britain and abroad. The cataloging is not finished but there are at present some fifteen files on Bunting in the Archive, mostly standard material, such as the printing of Briggflatts in Poetry (Chicago), and the lavish Fulcrum Press version of the same from 1966; and work on Bunting like Gael Turnbull's Arlespenny and Pickard's King Ida's Watchchain. Amongst all this are fourteen original letters from Bunting to Mottram, covering the years 1971-1978. This count excludes one brief covering note from Bunting to Mottram as editor of Poetry Review, upon the submission of a new Bunting poem (At Briggflatts Meetinghouse) for publication; and it is possible more material may emerge from boxes yet to be cataloged; but what we have is already significant, I feel, and attests to a relationship that is always mutually respectful, with Basil occasionally making his seniority felt, but not to the extent of jeopardizing a friendship that promised much satisfaction and benefit to both sides. When you consider the similarity between the two, in many ways-their devotion to modern literature, their interest in travel, their appreciation of classical music, their width of cultural experience-it may seem odd that they had not encountered each other earlier than they did. As far as I can make out, Gael Turnbull was the catalyst; and his establishing contact with Bunting via a listing in Peter Russell's magazine Nine led to the important connection with Stuart Montgomery of Fulcrum Press. Of course Mottram's connections with the North-East also included Tom Pickard and Barry MacSweeney; and Jonathan Williams, the American poet and publisher, who was resident some of the year at Corn Close, Dentdale, Cumbria. These are all contacts, I believe, that go back to the 1960s, but there is no indication of correspondence between Bunting and Mottram at that time. The letters begin with a brief note from Bunting of 1 June 1971, congratulating Mottram on his appointment (on 18 January 1971) as editor of Poetry Review. Bunting himself was invited to take the position of chairman of the Poetry Society in the following year (in February 1972), so that many of the letters have a semi-formal role, by virtue of this common involvement in the Poetry Society in London (publishers of Poetry Review). This first letter starts rather irreverently: Good Lord! Whatever has come over them? I never heard of The Poetry Review doing anything sensible before-which attests to the preexisting level of familiarity between the correspondents. When Basil writes I've not a line unpublished we have a clue moreover to the origin of the correspondence: Eric has obviously written and asked for a poem by Basil to publish in Poetry Review. (But none of Eric's letters to Basil survive, I believe. Eric himself kept no copies, and Bunting seems to have destroyed much correspondence.) In the text, some details of teaching work in Canada and the USA follow, then some personal account of the household at Shadingfield, and the letter ends Beautiful sunny day it is. …