Eyewear is very pleased to welcome Tony Lewis-Jones (pictured) this Friday.Lewis-Jones was born in Wales, and educated at Clifton and Oxford. While still at school, he won the T.E. Brown Prize for Poetry (1975). His poetry has appeared in magazines and anthologies all over the world. He has held a number of poetry-related posts, including Co-ordinator, Poems On The Bus and Poetry In The Parks, Poet-In-Residence at BBC Radio Bristol and Poet-In-Residence at The Bristol Evening Post. He is one of the 100 Poets Against The War (Salt Publications). His most recent collection Anytime was nominated for the Welsh Book of the Year 2007.
I've known of his work since just before I first published him in my anthology Short Fuse, launched in New York and Paris, where Lewis-Jones read. This poem is, as with much of his work, all-too-relevant in this troubled age.
Ruling Class
You weren’t so handsome then.
More human maybe.
We beat rebellion
Into your tender intellect
Till there was nothing else.
In retrospect
We wouldn’t have done otherwise.
It’s us you have to thank:
Our pupil, monster, the garrulous destroyer
Of nations. We taught you how to hate
Which is, by now you know,
A valuable gift.
poem by Tony Lewis-Jones
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