Poem by Claire Sharpe

Eyewear is very glad to welcome the Canadian poet Claire Sharpe (pictured) this Friday. Sharpe returned to Toronto in 2005 after spending six months in Amsterdam, and six years in England.

Her poetry has been shortlisted for the 2007 CBC Literary Awards, accepted for publication by Contemporary Verse 2, and published in Canadian and UK-based journals, including The Antigonish Review, echolocation, Misunderstandings Magazine, Dream Catcher, Staple, Magma, and Oxford Magazine.

Sharpe's essay on Finnish author Tove Jansson was published in Tove Jansson Rediscovered (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, September 2007). Claire received her MA in Creative Writing from the University of East Anglia, where I first met her.

Her poetry is spare, subtle, and carefully evokes mood and mind in interplay. I look forward to her debut collection.

Long light

shed by theme for the outcast.

The tulip, full-bowed, lashed yellow, about to open and expand, to open

And reach. Plant, but deliberately piecemeal; to plant

On a mechanical plane. That silence

In which I wrap myself; stalled engine, and when I turn my head

The siren’s cross and cut, through floodgates, dusk.

poem by Claire Sharpe

An earlier version of this poem appeared in Misunderstandings Magazine, vol. 7, Summer 2007.

Comments

Michael Kavanagh said…

Do you know, I think I used to work with Claire, about 6 years ago at OUP... I remember a Torontian named Claire who left to study creative writing. I'm sure it must be her! Lovely poem...

Fri May 02, 01:50:00 pm 2008

Claire Sharpe said…

Is that Michael Kavanagh of the Group Internet Department? I do remember the ELT redesign quite fondly. How are you doing?

Claire

Sun May 04, 02:54:00 pm 2008

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?

"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...".

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

Search This Blog