E Y E W E A R, THE BLOG - FREEDOM MEANS BEING UNAFRAID TO WRITE WHAT YOU THINK

The 2011 Lehman Lecture in association with The Kingston Writing School Professor David Lehman, Distinguished Visiting Writer "From Parody to Praise: When Poems Talk to Other Poems" Professor David Lehman was born in New York City in 1948. He graduated from Columbia University and attended Cambridge University in England as a Kellett Fellow. He also received a Ph.D. in English from Columbia University. He is the author of several collections of poems, including When a Woman Loves a Man (Scribner, 2005).  His books of criticism include The Last Avant-Garde: The Making of the New York School of Poets (Doubleday, 1998).  His study of detective novels, The Perfect Murder (1989), was nominated for an Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America.  He is series editor of The Best American Poetry, which he initiated in 1988, and is general editor of the University of Michigan Press's Poets on Poetry Series.  Most recently, Lehman edited The Oxford Book of American Poetry ...

Fourth issue, with two poems by Todd Swift I am very glad to appear in the latest Hearing Voices , vol. 4, ed. Jonathan and Maria Taylor (October 2011), ISBN 0-9551800-7-4, 978-0-9551800-7-1, £3.  Other poets included, include David Caddy, Alison Brackenbury, Alan Baker, Jacqui Rowe and Tony Williams . To order , please send a cheque made payable to Crystal Clear Creators to Jonathan Taylor, Crystal Clear Creators, c/o Department of English and Creative Writing, Faculty of Humanities, Clephan Building, De Montfort University, Leicester, LE1 9BH, U.K. Postage and packing is free. A subscription to all three issues of   Hearing Voices   costs £8 or £7 to members of Crystal Clear Creators. You can also subscribe to the third and fourth issue, which costs £5.50 for non-members, £5 to members.

MAJOR SPOILER ALERT. George Clooney has directed another film.  The Ides of March , based on an American play about the men (and they are men, alas) who run political campaigns, and the grubby deals they do, is by far the most over-rated film of 2011.  Don't get me wrong, it has a dream cast, including my favourite rising star, Ryan Gosling , and the Humpty-Dumpty of character-actor sad-sackdom Oscar royalty, Philip Seymour Hoffman and Paul Giamatti .  The plot is lacking, for me, valid revelationary power, or any credibility historically.  One recalls the scene in Casablanca , where the astounded police chief feigns surprise at discovering gambling in his favourite den.  On what planet do innocent young men working as "the best media mind in politics" not know that Democratic politicians, especially handsome ones, sleep with women on the campaign trail.  Do the names Kennedy , Clinton , or Edwards not mean anything? Indeed, so vanilla is the su...

Michael D. Higgins , a poet, has become president of Ireland for a 7-year-term.  This is good news for Ireland, and the world.  Higgins, by all accounts a personable, cultured, and energetic man, will be something of a late Irish Spring - reminding us that the true magic and value of the Irish people lies in their indomitable, creative spirit, and not sheer grubby mercantilism.

S.J. Fowler recorded this at a recent Oxfam event.  It is Mike Loveday reading at his debut pamphlet launch.

Eyewear is very pleased to welcome the American poet Richard Deming this week (pictured) as the featured poe t.  Deming  is a poet, art critic, and a theorist who works on the philosophy of literature and visual culture. His poems have appeared in such places as  Sulfur, Field, Indiana Review , and  The Nation , as well as  Great American Prose Poems: From Poe to the Present . He regularly writes for  The Boston Review  and  Artforum .  The Picture of JB in a Prospect of Ladyboys (after John Ashbery after Andrew Marvell, for Joshua Brown) I. A hand holding a soda trembles as some latent wish casts its lots. The generous arch of a penciled brow brings the gaze up close. Where else do names choose their changeable places? And the one girl with an impossibly slim waist faces the camera and smiles, while uneven skirts sway above the knees. In this picture there’s no nearby garden and everyone’s eyes a...

Canon Dr Giles Fraser , of St Paul's, is resigning, after his welcoming (and Christian) approach to the anti-capitalist encampment outside his door became antithetical to the mercantile needs of those higher up in his church.  Given Christ's infamous attack on the money traders of his time, and capitalism's dehumanising effects, Fraser is both prophetic and right, and the failure in his ecclesiastical community to appreciate his good zeal is timidity amok.

The tragic news, despite what we had been told to expect, is that Amy Winehouse was not "clean" when she died.  Instead, as the coroner told us, she was five times over the legal limit, three days into a vodka binge.  According to her GP, who visited her soon before she died at home, she was "tipsy" but still lucid, and talking of her future.  Alcohol changed that situation quickly enough.  It's a killer, and always has been - and needs to be licensed and consumed with more care than the UK drinks industry allows.  One day, the scandal of our age will be the way in which tobacco and booze were sold over the counter to us, wasting the billions that could bail out the NHS.  I saw my maternal uncle, Edward , drink himself to death - much like Winehouse, one night he went across the street, and bought a bottle from the shop that had promised us never to sell him any liquor - went home, and drank it, dying in bed a few hours later.  Like Winehouse, he was ...

Europe is on the brink.  When a leader of Germany predicts that potential economic ruin could lead to future lack of peace in Europe, as Merkel did today, it is time to take notice.  Greece, then Italy, and Spain, may default soon, if nothing is done.  It seems an extraordinary failure of nerve and imagination, a bit like the period before World War One, or Two, when leaders dithered, afraid to act, thus ensuring worse was to come.  However, there is another danger, one of too-great union - should the EU become a two or three tier organisation, with some nations fiscally joined at the hip, they may all find it more easy to stumble over the cliff together.  In this way, some British caution makes sense; yet the more sidelined the Tories demand we remain, in the UK, the less control we will have over the deals ahead.  These deals will be trying.  Facing Europe is possible recession, or the meltdown of the Euro, or worse chaos.  One must hope for th...

The news is startling if inspiring: Scotland's greatest modern poet, Edwin Morgan , has left a million pounds to the SNP , for the campaign for an independent Scotland.  Poetry Has Made Something Happen?  Hopefully.

John Muckle reviews Spiritual Letters: Series 1-5 by David Miller Fragments of memory, remembered fragments of writing – Christian and Jewish religious meditation; letters from friends; dreams; narratives – David Miller’s Spiritual Letters weaves these together into a series of excavated nuggets of unresolved story that walk a borderline between poetry, prose-poetry and various modes of narrative art, yielding a reading experience that is splintered, occasionally frustrating, but memorable and quite literally haunting. Miller hovers in a world of ghosts between the quasi-religion of art and actual religious belief, and addresses fundamental questions: What is the function of memory? Is it a gift of God that enables us to recall friends, lost loves in anticipation of an eventual reunion, in other words, a prefigurative promise of immortality? A means of cultural survival? In which of St Augustine’s two modes of regret is the past made most vitally (or painfully) present: nos...

Eyewear is very glad to feature a poem by Joanne Limburg this Friday. Kaddish for Amy Let us now magnify and sanctify the name of Him who made and warned us, according to his Will, who placed in us our soft or hardened hearts, then blessed or punished us for what they made us do who put an evil spirit into Saul, then gave a song to David so he could drive the spirit out. Let us bless and extol Him, exalt and praise Him, who, beyond the reach of any song performable, commands us still to sing. Limburg was born in London in 1970, and read Philosophy at Cambridge. She won an Eric Gregory Award in 1998 and published her first collection, Femenismo , with Bloodaxe two years later. She has since published a second collection, Paraphernalia , which was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation. The Woman Who Thought Too Much, a memoir about OCD, anxiety and poetry, came out in 2010 and was short-listed for the Mind Book ...

In Britain, a man is currently pleading manslaughter after strangling a woman he alleges screamed after he kissed her.  This is a tragic crime.  In Libya, the streets are gleeful with the death of a man, pulled, terrified and pleading, from a storm drain.  Once a powerful tyrant, he was now weak, humbled.  So they shot him in the head, pulled his body about, and cheered and jeered.  Obama, and Cameron, have claimed this as a great day for that nation.  Actually, it is a barbaric day.  A tragedy.  Each human death is terrible.  Each life should be guarded, and nurtured.  No one is too wicked to deserve a fair trial, or humane treatment.  We deride the law in Iran that calls for cruel punishments that fit the crime, and yet applaud mob justice when it suits our ends.  As in Iraq, this assassination has silenced an inconvenient maverick, who dared to challenge the hegemony of the oil-starved nations of the West.  Is it good h...

PRESS RELEASE Thursday 20th October 2011 2011 T S Eliot Prize supported by Aurum Funds and the T S Eliot Estate This year’s shortlist and new three-year support announced for ‘the world’s top poetry award’ The Poetry Book Society is pleased to announce the shortlist for the 2011 T S Eliot Prize for Poetry. Judges Gillian Clarke (Chair), Stephen Knight and Dennis O’Driscoll have chosen six collections from the 104 books submitted by publishers, which join the four PBS Choices to make up the ten collections on the shortlist: John Burnside                        Black Cat Bone                     Jonathan Cape Carol Ann Duffy                    The Bees                ...

Steven Johannes Fowler reviews New Collected Poems translated by Robin Fulton Tomas Tranströmer There is little doubt that Tomas Tranströmer will be remembered as one of the last great figures of 20 th century European poetry, and by many, the last of a dying breed – that is a poet whose work and whose persona genuinely and thoroughly resonate in the consciousness of their nation. All the more remarkable perhaps, because he has come to stand for an image of the poet we might perceive as tailored and quaint – a deeply private and modest man, whose output of poetry over the last sixty years has been sparse though clearly momentous enough to command a world audience. This important volume from Bloodaxe, the second of its kind in under a decade, may not build any new structures for the reception of Tranströmer ’s poetry, but in its simple reconstitution of works past, embellished by the short, poignant works Tranströmer has undertaken in the 21 st century, the book becom...

Todd Colby read last week for Oxfam in London.   Steven Fowler record this performance.

The intervention of Sir Andrew Motion , a fine poet, offering his alternate Booker shortlist, and his scolding of the current panel of judges, along with many other noises off, and the launching of a new prize, is all nonsense.  As everyone who reads in the UK now knows, there is a supposed tension between a "good read" and "literary excellence", and this year's cohort of judges, led by a former spymaster, apparently tipped over in favour of the readability factor.  Perhaps.  But it seems to be a form of backseat-driving, if not a more questionable form of arm-twisting, to so vocally contest the judging panel's decisions.  The judges were, after all, acting in good faith when asked to judge, and have no doubt done their best, according to the rules. Sir Andrew has not read all the submitted books, has he?  Indeed, there is a form of Establishment fever in this - a panic that several of the books are by "unknown" authors (in fact, Canadians) - and...

Ilya Kaminsky read last week at the Oxfam Poetry Series in Marylebone.  Steven Fowler recorded this for us.

The anti-capitalists have been occupying London in their Fawkes-off masks, railing against banking and "usury", in sympathy with other such gatherings around the world - a glocalist rallying of the usual anarchists, left-leaners, and rabble-rousers.  So far so good, you might say - except what are they protesting against, precisely?  The global financial system?  Clearly, the GFS has problems.  We are seeing that now, with the turbulent, sometimes rather faltering, markets, and Western economies of Europe and America.  But - and this I think is key: what should we replace it with?  Sudden removal of the GFS, like oxygen for a patient, would kill us all.  The utter chaos of a world without banking, or commerce, or indeed, money, is almost unthinkable.  It is true that we may need to gradually move to a less-growth-intensive model, or a feudal-agrarian model, or an anarcho-syndicalist one; whatever.  It has to be gradual, and it has to be w...

Bobby Parker reviews Stop/Sharpening/Your/Knives (4) It has taken me a while to write this review. The book swallowed me. I found myself in a beautiful, haunting and obsessively quirky world that I just didn’t want to leave. Writing this review almost bursts a magic bubble. I must be careful. And I must begin by saying that this is the best contemporary anthology of poetry I have read. Honest. After a lull in my own poetic output, S/S/Y/K (4) has filled me with the urgency to surround my own dark, silly and surreal ideas with fresh words, vibrant words, words that, far from desperate, know they are bright enough to lure us into a powerful dream. There are 28 poets in the book, with black and white illustrations between the poems. The artwork doesn’t just complement the poets; it stands side by side with the poems. It gives you that moment, after a final line that has just snatched your breath, to feel the genuine playfulness of this place just as much as the dark humour ...

I am pleased to note that I'm reading at several excellent reading venues in October.  Thursday, October 13th, I will be at Lauderdale House at 8 pm, reading with poets including Susan Wicks .  Then, on Monday, October 17th, I'll be joining a large cast of Irish poets for the 30th birthday party of Salmon Press, 8 pm at the Troubadour .  Poets reading there will include the wonderful Nessa O'Mahony .  At the end of the month, I'll be reading for Rhythm & Muse , a Kingston Writing School event, out in Kingston, on Friday, October 28th, again at 8 pm, at The Space, Penrhyn Road campus, with fellow KU poets such as Liz Berry .  Finally, for this year 9I think), November 9th, I read with Denise Riley and David Lehman at Oxfam Books & Music.

Last night Sir Paul , the most famous popular musician in the world alongside Bob Dylan (arguably) was married in London to an American heiress, and celebrated at his home in St John's Wood, with Mark Ronson DJing.  Rather incredibly, when the party (which featured among others Twiggy ) ran on past 1 am, neighbours called the noise inspectors, who came and (one presumes politely) asked one of The Fab Four to turn it down.  Given that he is a Beatle, and gave the world such joy for decades with his music, it seems utterly petty to complain.  The last song was 'Hey Jude', and the music stopped at 2 am.  So much for Swinging London.

I saw Jerusalem last night at the Apollo Theatre in London, just as it returns to London after its triumphant Broadway reincarnation, where lead Mark Rylance won the Tony for Best Actor, and where it was nominated for Best Play ( War Horse won by a nose).  The sense of excitement in the audience was palpable - Keira Knightly was in the row ahead of me, cuddling up to a handsome young man - it was that sort of vibe.  I came to the play without any sense of how good it was meant to be.  I was in fact a bit put off by the subject - a drunken Romany squatter - and thought it might be an angry State of England Play.  Instead, the last ten minutes are the most purely dramatic and moving I have ever experienced in the theatre, and I have seen hundreds of plays since I was a kid, in New York, Toronto, London, and Stratford-upon-Avon. Butting up against an extremely raw, ugly and authentic sense of a broken Britain of promiscuous, foul-mouthed, drug-addled youth, and an...

This from Brian Busby : This coming Thursday, 13 October, will see the dedication of a plaque in memory of (great Canadian modernist and lawyer) F.R. Scott at the chapel of Montreal's  St James the Apostle Anglican Church . Scott's will be the third in a cortege of writers' plaques that began two years ago when a small group gathered to remember  John Glassco . A plaque to  A.J.M. Smith  followed, installed on the eve of the thirtieth anniversary of his passing. This year's service, which will see formal recognition of 'The Writers' Chapel', will include two speakers from McGill university, the institution forever tied to Scott: Desmond Morton (Hiram Mills Emeritus Professor) and Roderick A. Macdonald (F.R. Scott Professor of Constitutional and Public Law). All are welcome. Thursday, 13 October 2011 Evensong, 6 p.m. Church of St James the Apostle 1439 St Catherine Street West, Montreal A reception with wine and cheese will follow.

Good news.  The major poet  Tomas Tranströmer has won this year's Nobel Prize for literature, at the age of 80.

Congratulations to John Burnside , for winning Best Book, at this year's Forward prizes , to Rachael Boast for winning for Best First Collection, and to the late, great, and much missed, R.F. Langley , for Best Single Poem.

Eyewear is pleased to feature, this National Poetry Day in Britain, the poet Marianne Burton . Marianne Burton is a prize-winning British poet Burton trained as a lawyer and worked in corporate finance in the City. She was awarded a year’s mentorship by  Smiths Knoll  and the resulting pamphlet,  The Devil’s Cut , was a Poetry Book Society Choice.  Her poems have been published in places such as  Agenda, Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review, CSM, New Contrast, New Plains Review, Poetry Daily, Poetry Ireland Review, Poetry London, Poetry Wales, Rialto, The North  and  The Times Literary Supplement.  She has won prizes in the  Bridport, Cardiff, Edwin Morgan, Mslexia,  and  TLS  poetry competitions.   Her first full collection is forthcoming from Seren.   She lives in the Welland Valley and London.   The Army Cook in Pevensey               I am worn ou...

The news today on my Blackberry BBC app was totally dominated by America - reminding us that, even now, with the supposed upsurge of the so-called BRIC countries, no other nation on Earth still manages to hold such cultural sway (at least in the UK): the death of Steve Jobs , the stepping aside of Sarah Palin , the ranking of CalTech as the world's top university, riots on Wall Street, and American university human cloning advances - here is a nation in ferment, capable of creating great personalities and institutions, that further human genius.  Why?  Because, cynicism aside, no other nation is as free, or expansive imaginatively.  As Jobs said, famously, we should never settle.  Find a true calling and go for it.  This is a lesson other nations, who continue to suppress their people, might heed.  For now, America remains the indispensible country, for good and ill, as the twin poles of Jobs and Palin remind us.

Sad news.  The industrial genius of our age - hence, a digital kind - has died - Steve Jobs , as famous now as Edison or Ford were to their times, and as influential.  His works changed the way we work, and play, and ushered in the current climate where hand-held devices, and small bits of information, define our daily habits.  He recreated recreation.  His death is also salutary for a grimmer reason - it shows the need to keep working to find cures for the various cancers that still ravage humankind.  To die a billionaire at 56 from cancer reveals that nothing is currently available to inevitably halt this terrible scourge.  It is to be hoped that some of Job's own money can now go to this work. American Genius: Steve Jobs, R.I.P.

Tomorrow, another Nobel for a writer.  The buzz is for Franzen .  If a poet (in English, to be parochial for a minute), the following have a shot: Les Murray, Bill Manhire, Paul Muldoon, Anne Carson, Geoffrey Hill , and John Ashbery - each is a major figure, and is worthy.  I can only guess at the many other-languaged poets out there.  Again, prose writers in English who are deserving include Philip Roth , Margaret Atwood , and John Banville .  It probably should go to Murakami .  We shall see...

Maria Taylor reviews Kidland and other Poems By Paul Kingsnorth Paul Kingsnorth’s debut collection Kidland and other Poems is nature poetry with teeth. These poems eschew sentimentality or mere description and instead are characterised by radicalism. ‘It is often that I hate my Humanity,’ writes Kingsnorth, yearning for a natural world which is unspoilt by human destruction. In this respect, his poetry is underpinned with a sense of loss as well as anger. Ecopoetry is, arguably, relatively new and marked by presenting ‘distinctly contemporary problems and issues’, as J. Scott Bryson has noted in his introduction to the genre. Kingsnorth’s poetry could be deemed as ‘anti-humanist,’ as well as ecological. Kidland longs for a return to a pre-human history, calling upon ‘dark gods’ to re-establish the order of nature:             There is a heavy, heartless beauty anchored in the black soils of Europe, silent ...

Eyewear recommends: First reading at The Troubdour this season! Mon 17 oct: celebrating thirty years of galway’s salmon poetry with julian stannard, lorna shaughnessy, todd swift, nessa o’mahony, alan jude moore, noel monahan, anne le marquand hartigan, (ed.) jessie lendennie and guitarist henry fajemirokun Inspired by the Salmon of Knowledge in Celtic mythology, Salmon Press was established in Galway in 1981 as an alternative voice in Irish literature, and has published 300 volumes of poetry over the past 30 years. v Julian Stannard taught English & American Lit. at University of Genoa for many years— The Parrots of Villa Gruber Discover Lapis Lazuli (2011) completes his Genoese trilogy; v Lorna Shaughnessy has published translations of contemporary Mexican poetry—most recent poetry collection, Witness Trees (2011); v Todd Swift lectures in creative writing at Kingston University and is Oxfam poet-in-residence, collections inc...