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

Autobiography of a lost soul I thought to be recognised knowing myself as special as anyone has ever been since the moon shone on Caligula’s cruel breast or later on the cane of Chaplin; on the bent wing of that aviatrix who went down in the unspeaking sea; all those who came before me including that painter of wild nights of blue disorder; I vibrated with their frequency or so I felt, self-grasping and self-revelatory – but sought out the lofty critics eager to welcome evaluation, to crown my greatness. None stepped down to laurel my brow.   I began to sense there was no order or control at the fashionable core of art, and so, my new philosophy was to go to God directly, for union with such an authority would confer an overwhelming aura of utter dignity. However natural all the loneliness of my unjoined genius, I soon tire...

Eyewear - which will be publishing a novel of his in early 2015 - is very glad to tonight present a new poem by the significant American poet, Alfred Corn .   Common   Dwelling Mornings, early, others make themselves at differing levels heard and even felt, at least, if you can guess the gist of another life from sound alone. Like the enviable neighbor couple Who shift and stir less than an arm’s length behind the headboard, their murmurs sifting into consciousness as though no sheetrock intervened. It’s the sonic ambient for one last underwater, shut-eye scenario, which holds until the alarm starts prodding. Downstairs, would that be a he or she who in chilled gloom grinds french roast for the day’s first espresso? And not just once but vibrantly again after what must be a caffeinated interval. Alertness has its downside, though, delivering this thought: the practice of selfhood turns ...

Lesley Saunder s reviews Loudness by Judy Brown Judy Brown’s poetic (though not necessarily her person) thrives on missed footings, lost opportunities, failed relationships, metal fatigue, house-moves, getting pissed.   Her self-admonition – ‘Be more interesting’ – in the first stanza of the opening poem is entirely otiose (as one suspects she knows):   continuously interesting, thematically, rhetorically and psychologically, is what the book manages to be. The impasses and embarrassments she finds or puts or imagines herself to be in – this is not poetry to be taken at the face value of confessional – are not only attentively, cleverly observed but also rendered with a deceptive straightforwardness that allows her to manoeuvre words into positions where they can do maximum damage to the reader’s expectations.    Here’s the beginning of ‘Dignity’: Four am in a five star hotel. The atrium drops beside you like a turquoise mineshaft. ...

Catherine Woodward reviews Monastery of the Moon by Norbert Hirschhorn Monastery of the Moon is written in the diasporic tradition of memory and displacement, it is about love and statelessness and the lack of distinction between the two. The collection takes place on a huge multinational and multicultural stage, where Hirschhorn plays out some of the appalling sufferings of man with a sensitivity always poised on the edge of its opposite, never once quashing the nagging anxiety of (non)belonging that the flesh is heir to in all matters of love and politics. Two quotes from Monastery of the Moon encapsulate the book for me ‘homesick for places unvisited’ (Qaseeda – A Love Song) and ‘I’m lonely as a stone’ (My Thesaurus Amplifies ‘longing’) There is a lovely streak of foreignness in the imagery, always on the verge of, but ultimately refusing to become familiar ‘Scimitar moon’ ‘curtains furled like gardenias’ ('Lebanon') ‘Outside,/a tropic...