Featured Poet: Winnie Chau

Eyewear is pleased to welcome Chinese poet Winnie Chau (pictured) to these pages this Friday, on the cusp of her 27th birthday this Sunday (she was born in 1984). Chau comes from Hong Kong. She graduated with an MA degree in Creative Writing from Kingston University, where I was glad to be her tutor. She has been writing for different English arts and lifestyle magazines in Hong Kong. She is also a theatre and dance critic. I find her work rather brilliant and delightful, and look forward to her debut collection, when it comes.

The Finger-biting Girl

is the ph-

one-

me she flares a fervent fondness f-

or, a faint favouritism.

but finking, no thinking,

about thinking about her

filosophical, no philosophical,

fantasies are even more f-

rilling:

“once upon a time

there was a suicidal girl

whose most abominable habit

aside from committing suicides

was biting

her finger

whenever she wanted to die

a little death

just a little

she bit

the thought

of not being here

tomorrow maybe

the next second probably

tempted her

to put the knuckle

of her forefinger

between her teeth

but she didn’t

bleed

she sulked

at the loss (no,

the not-losing)

she hated

the f-word

fate

one day

she woke up

beside a man

she saw him

chewing

her finger

that moment

she stopped

biting”

she finks it’s f-

un entering

others’ stories

uninvited.

she can’t

help!

she bites her finger again.

poem reprinted from The Delinquent periodical (UK) with permission of the poet, Winnie Chau

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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