Poet Philip Gross is becoming something of the dark horse worth placing a bet on. Having won the UK's top poetry prize back in January, for one book, The Water Table, he has now won Welsh Book of the Year, for another - this time the captivating I Spy Pinhole Eye (perfect for the themes of this blog) - published by vital up-and-coming small press Cinnamon. The book has photographs by Simon Denison. More power to Mr Gross. He's one of the very best poets Britain has on tap right now. Order this book and see what the fuss is about.
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....
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