Carry on, England: Tom Raworth's "West Wind," Intuition, and Neo-Avant-Garde Poetics

Abstract

hile studying at Essex University, Tom Raworth published several volumes of experimental verse, among them The Big Green Day (1968), Lion Lion (1970), and Moving (1971). His poetry of these years, Peter Middleton asserts, represents purest product of sixties culture that appeared in Britain (14). It features good-natured and articulate incomprehensibility redolent of the era's counterculture, which sincerely if naively tended to presume that a revolution capable of overthrowing the capitalist state was imminent (14-15).1 Times change, as do authors. After completing his M.A., Raworth lived abroad until 1977. He returned to England to take the position of visiting poet-in-residence at King's College, Cambridge. In his absence, United Kingdom politics had taken turn toward the dire. James Callaghan's Labour government was engaged in slow, painful process of self-destruction. A bitter series of strikes and disputes in late 1978-the infamous Winter of Discontent-was followed by vote of no confidence in March 1979. In May, in the