Skipping across the Pond: Interaction between American and British Poetries 1964–1970

Abstract

RH: Allen Fisher, your career as a poet is closely linked with London, where you were born and grew up, and integral to works such as Place and Brixton Fractals. Indeed, since the start of the 1970s you have been one of the most influential figures for successive generations of the “London School” of poets: you were included, along with Bob Cobbing, by Adrian Clarke and Robert Sheppard in their US-published anthology. Floating Capital: New Poets from London (1991), and, with Bill Griffiths and Brian Catling, in “3 London Poets” for the first Paladin Re/Active Anthology, Future Exiles (1992): and your work remains important for younger London poets such as Redell Olsen and Sophie Robinson. But throughout, the United States has been integral to your writing: the first book edition of part of Place was published in North Carolina, and your work was being read by “Language Poets” such as Charles Bernstein and Bruce Andrews before “Language Poetry” came into existence. In this interview I’d like to know more about the importance of US poets for your own work and on poetics in Britain more generally.