Who Should Win The Eliots?

I don't want to be polemical, but I feel the shortlist for the TS Eliots did not represent all the best of British poetry this year (it was a very good year and ten would never have been enough to capture this, however the list had been sliced, it must be said). I missed Luke Kennard, Annie Freud, David Morley, and Daljit Nagra, for instance, from this list - as well as John Ashbery.

Of the poets on the list, one or two strike me as too newly-emerged, or yet again oft-laurelled, to necessarily require this garland. It seems to be Carcanet's year - the poets they have fielded are particularly impressive.

So, who would be on the my shorter list? Strong contenders would be Matthew Sweeney, or Sophie Hannah - who take humour, formal style, and the surreal, into new places for poetry. Mimi Khalvati writes exquisitely, and is a kind of master of what she does. However, two collections demand ever closer attention, for any number of reasons. My head says Fiona Sampson, my heart Edwin Morgan.

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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....

Poetry vs. Literature

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"I have crossed oceans of time to find you..."

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...".

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

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