ABSTRACT
The comments on 'pop' poetry, and on audience's tor poetry, lead him on to say something about a number of poets who have for very different reasons established themselves by now as popular, at least in the sense that their books sell many more copies than most so-called 'literary' novels in Britain today. Tony Harrison, Douglas Dunn, James Fenton and Wendy Cope have never attempted to ingratiate themselves; but each has found a devoted audience. Both Tony Harrison and Douglas Dunn came from working-class backgrounds; they have continued to live their adult lives away from London and these facts have had a strong bearing on their poetry. In Fenton's writing life, long periods of silence have been punctuated with bursts of activity. Settling for a time in the Philippines, in 1989 he produced at his own expense Manila Envelope, a large-format collection of new poems together with something called 'The Manila Manifesto' and a poster.
