Exciting news. Eyewear Publishing's significant new prize - £1000 for best debut collection by an English-language poet born in or since 1980 (from anywhere in the world) - is to be judged in 2012 by British poet and editor Tim Dooley. Tim Dooley is reviews and features editor of Poetry London. He has reviewed poetry for the TLS and worked as a creative writing tutor for Arvon, Writer's Inc. and The Poetry School. He was twice won the Poetry Business pamphlet competition, and Tenderness (2004) was a Poetry Book Society choice. His 2008 collection for Salt, Keeping Time, was PBS recommendation. Imagined Rooms (Salt, 2010) came out to much acclaim. Eyewear is very pleased to be associated with Tim Dooley as judge for this competition - his measured approach to differing poetic modes, integrity of vision, and evident poetic talent make him an ideal scout for the very best of new writing. There is no entrance fee for the Melita Hume Prize. Deadline is submission postmarked May 1. Short-list to be announced June 1. Winner announced no later than September 1, 2012.
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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