Eyewear Publishing has received numerous submissions from across the world - from China, Africa, Australia/ New Zealand, North America, Ireland, the UK, Europe and South America - from poets born in 1980 or since, whose first full collection this would be. Submission was free. The "sifter" is Todd Swift and Tim Dooley will judge the final shortlist, which cannot be more than 12 poetry collections. The winner will be announced in August, and their collection will be published by Eyewear Publishing no later than in 2013; they will also receive a thousand pound prize. The quality of the work has been eye-opening, and has made the compilation of even such a large shortlist challenging. As part of the excitement of the run-up to the Jubilee holiday, Eyewear will begin announcing each winner on a semi-regular basis over the next fortnight, as if leaked by a papal butler.
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....
Comments
This confirms my growing suspicion that these days there seem to be more writers of poetry than readers of it. Good luck to all your contestants.
Best wishes from Simon