Featured Poet: Kim Moore

Eyewear is very glad to welcome British poet Kim Moore (pictured) this sunny London day. Moore is 29 and works as a peripatetic brass teacher for Cumbria Music Service. She is in the final year of a part-time MA in Creative Writing at Manchester Metropolitan University. She has been published in The TLS, Poetry Review, The North, The Rialto and Ambit - all excellent places. She has read alongside Carol Ann Duffy in the Carol Ann Duffy and Friends readings at the Royal Exchange in Manchester and is the Reviews Editor for The Cadaverine. In 2010 she won the Geoffrey Dearmer prize and in 2011 won an Eric Gregory Award. Keep an eye out for her debut collection, she's one to watch!

The Lighthouse

Every night I go up and down,

tend the lamp. My life is metal.

The light does not behave

as it should, turns on itself

while rocks chew the water.

I set off in a boat at sunrise,

row for hours, but when I close

my eyes, I’m here again,

kneeling at your feet

and still you search the dunes

the light pushing through

the scrub like a wet-nosed dog,

leaving marks on windows

that could be breath, or rain.

Will I know your shape next time,

the trees like twists of grey,

the rocks chewing the water?

Remember how I followed

your light like a child, without

question, without answer?

poem by Kim Moore; published online with permission of the author

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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