Paterson on Pinter

Poet Don Paterson caused a stir this week by using the TS Eliot lecture to attack Harold Pinter, reports The Guardian.

"To take a risk in a poem is not to write a big sweary outburst about how crap the war in Iraq is, even if you are the world's greatest living playwright. Because anyone can do that."

He also stuck the knife into amateur poets.

"Many people feel that, armed with a beermat, a pencil, and a recent mildly traumatic experience, they are entitled to send 100 pages of handwritten drivel into Faber or Cape."

Some lively correspondence ensued.