Featured Poet: Paul Adrian

Eyewear is very glad to feature, this Bank Holiday Monday, the young British poet, Paul Adrian, pictured, who recently won the UK's top poetry competition for a single poem - The National Poetry Competition. Adrian was born in West Yorkshire in 1984, and still lives there. He studied Music Technology at Leeds Metropolitan University, and currently works in a bookshop. He has been Books Editor of Leeds Guide Magazine, and still writes a regular politics column for them. He has also contributed book reviews and interviews to several other publications, including BBC Online. He is a volunteer with the Volunteer Reading Help scheme. Here is a poem regarding Bruce Lee:

One Inch Punch

No stooge or trick

palmed a boulder’s weight behind Lee’s

outstretched hand, the livewire might

accumulated in that brief

distance being not true strength

but practiced flick

of deepest, flawless certainties

proving untimid to the light,

the pulsing fist of heart’s belief

undiluted at arm’s length.

poem by Paul Adrian; published with permission of the author

Comments

IQ AND THE POETS - ARE YOU SMART?

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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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