Eyewear Publishing announces its inaugural (2012) THE MELITA HUME PRIZE FOR POETRY. This will be an award of £1,000 and a publishing deal for the best first full collection (i.e. debut) of a young poet writing in the English language born in 1980 or later. The aim of this prize is to support younger emerging writers during difficult economic times, with a quality publication in England and a helpful amount of money which can assist them in their studies, travel or accomodation, for example. This is open to any one of the requisite age, anywhere in the world. More details will be announced in January on eyewearpublishing.com on how to submit. Melita Hume is a Canadian book collector, and compiler of poems and information about Canadian authors, who lived most of her life in St. Lambert and the Eastern Townships.
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?
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