Culture and location: pros and cons

[Lizzie]

2. It is language that limits, not geography. White New World writers belonged to the European tradition, someone writing in Swahili does not.

Hmmmm, this is an interesting point. I have to think some more, but I'm not sure that someone born and raised in London, Dublin, etc. doesn't have some kind of advantage over a white English speaker of European decent that lives in, say, Nunavut, Canada. Some places are going to have better access to publishers, writing groups, etc. than others, but I don't know the business well enough to speak definitively. Growing up somewhere off the beaten path could potentially confer benefits in terms of having a very unique voice that hasn't been done before (to the point of the quote above), but I think there is also a potential disadvantage to being from a geographical area that not as many people can relate to. And, I think in poetry, a lot of times, we want to see ourselves and our experiences reflected.