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. 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

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