Poem by Valerie Lynch

Eyewear is very pleased to welcome Valerie Lynch (above, reading at the Poetry Cafe) this Friday, especially as she recently turned 80 (on Tuesday of this week - congratulations).

Lynch has been a part of my Poetry School seminar groups for several years now, and I have been much impressed with her determination, and talent. She began writing poetry at 77, after various interesting careers as teacher (Economics), archaeologist (in a City Museum), assistant editor of an encyclopaedia, and finally a psychoanalytical psychotherapist (still practising).

She has quickly developed a sometimes startling, often painfully honest, voice, dealing with themes of palpable interest to her - and all people in due course - ageing, memory, the body, loss, desire, sexuality, love, and time - and how anger and beauty twine around these subjects. I think she has some work well worth reading, and someone in the UK should publish her collection before she turns 100, so a wider audience can benefit from her vision.

Writing the Borderlines

Below your dismissive eye
is the undisturbed, disturbing
country of nearby.
Sit in a siding a layby the grass
at the quarry's edge
and use whatever's around.

Last night's storm
that reared its head over trees
and walked you home
dark green figs in a row
on an orange dish,
the spaces where we don't talk;

even Miss Peat
on the motorway verge
in her picnic chair
wearing a tired hat
and a frightened face
a long way from Walthamstow.

poem by Valerie Lynch

Comments

IQ AND THE POETS - ARE YOU SMART?

When you open your mouth to speak, are you smart? A funny question from a great song, but also, a good one, when it comes to poets, and poetry. We tend to have a very ambiguous view of intelligence in poetry, one that I'd say is dysfunctional. Basically, it goes like this: once you are safely dead, it no longer matters how smart you were. For instance, Auden was smarter than Yeats , but most would still say Yeats is the finer poet; Eliot is clearly highly intelligent, but how much of Larkin 's work required a high IQ? Meanwhile, poets while alive tend to be celebrated if they are deemed intelligent: Anne Carson, Geoffrey Hill , and Jorie Graham , are all, clearly, very intelligent people, aside from their work as poets. But who reads Marianne Moore now, or Robert Lowell , smart poets? Or, Pound ? How smart could Pound be with his madcap views? Less intelligent poets are often more popular. John Betjeman was not a very smart poet, per se. What do I mean by smart?

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In terms of great films about, and of, love, we have Vertigo, In The Mood for Love , and Casablanca , Doctor Zhivago , An Officer and a Gentleman , at the apex; as well as odder, more troubling versions, such as Sophie's Choice and Silence of the Lambs . I think my favourite remains Bram Stoker's Dracula , with the great immortal line "I have crossed oceans of time to find you...".

THE SWIFT REPORT 2023

I am writing this post without much enthusiasm, but with a sense of duty. This blog will be 20 years old soon, and though I rarely post here anymore, I owe it some attention. Of course in 2023, "Swift" now means one thing only, Taylor Swift, the billionaire musician. Gone are the days when I was asked if I was related to Jonathan Swift. The pre-eminent cultural Swift is now alive and TIME PERSON OF THE YEAR. There is no point in belabouring the obvious with delay: 2023 was a low-point in the low annals of human history - war, invasion, murder, in too many nations. Hate, division, the collapse of what truth is, exacerbated by advances in AI that may or may not prove apocalyptic, while global warming still seems to threaten the near-future safety of humanity. It's been deeply depressing. The world lost some wonderful poets, actors, musicians, and writers this year, as it often does. Two people I knew and admired greatly, Ian Ferrier and Kevin Higgins, poets and organise

E Y E W E A R, THE BLOG - FREEDOM MEANS BEING UNAFRAID TO WRITE WHAT YOU THINK

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