Poem by Cherry Smyth

Eyewear is very pleased to welcome the poet Cherry Smyth (pictured) this Valentine's Day weekend (and also, auspiciously, on a Friday the 13th!).

Smyth is an Irish writer, living in London. Her debut poetry collection, When the Lights Go Up, was published by Lagan Press, 2001. Her anthology of women prisoners’ writing, A Strong Voice in a Small Space, Cherry Picking Press, 2002, won the Raymond Williams Community Publishing Award in 2003.

Her poetry pamphlet, The Future of Something Delicate, was published by Smith/Doorstop, 2005. A second collection called One Wanted Thing appeared in 2006, again from Lagan. The title poem of this collection was nominated for the Forward Best Poem of the Year 2004, and carries Smyth's hallmarks: precision, linguistic inventiveness and joy.

Smyth was a prize-winner in the Tonbridge Poetry Competition, 2006 and the London Writers’ Competition, 2007. Her work was selected for Best of Irish Poetry, 2008, Southword Editions. She also writes for visual art magazines: Modern Painters, Art Monthly, Art Review and Circa. Smyth is a poet whose work is well worth getting to know.

Back to Back

This cinema that needs
no darkness
spooling bloom

overnight overfed pink
heads bunch
and brag on branches

perfume loose
and bareback
rides in from the gardens

back to back
petals zoom from buds
mouthing May

colour red, colour yellow
color Techni
disregarding fences

poem by Cherry Smyth

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....

Poetry vs. Literature

Poetry is, of course, a part of literature. But, increasingly, over the 20th century, it has become marginalised - and, famously, has less of an audience than "before". I think that, when one considers the sort of criticism levelled against Seamus Heaney and "mainstream poetry", by poet-critics like Jeffrey Side , one ought to see the wider context for poetry in the "Anglo-Saxon" world. This phrase was used by one of the UK's leading literary cultural figures, in a private conversation recently, when they spoke eloquently about the supremacy of "Anglo-Saxon novels" and their impressive command of narrative. My heart sank as I listened, for what became clear to me, in a flash, is that nothing has changed since Victorian England (for some in the literary establishment). Britain (now allied to America) and the English language with its marvellous fiction machine, still rule the waves. I personally find this an uncomfortable position - but when ...

"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...".

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