The Informationists

I came across Richard Price and the Informationists only last year when his first book length collection Lucky Day came out from Carcanet. I was intrigued, not least because I'd not heard of them before! Yet, I liked the way that Scottish poets from Edwin Morgan to Don Paterson seemed more tuned in to the possibilities of the avant garde than their English and Irish contemporaries. In short, Scottish poetry seems not unafraid to have fun - with language and subject. Keen to find out more I came across talk of the informationist anthology, Contraflow on the Superhighway, a great and evocative title, which was even for sale on Amazon. I sent off for it on 1st January and waited, and waited. Remarkably, having given up all hope, it arrived today. I'd upload the cover image but Blogger's saying "no" at the mo. Its a lovely book of its type, full of manifesto and quirkiness. Price is about my age; and the concern of the informationists, seems similar to the American prose writers around McSweeneys, to take the detritus of this information age and make something of it; the tools, they see, are all around us; in the redudant day-glo language of late capitalism. My own occasional experiments with this kind of writing seem a little less alone today.