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

Want: 2; Have: 1 For James Brookes   Last year tossed many friends into bin bags... for all their sins, they were better alive; thrived in the sun, dirt annoys the skin, erodes faith. I have never met a dead believer. We love God most when living. The dead know the bald mysteries. You get rich with washboard abs and blonde curls. 90% of porn is police handcuffs and suffering in falconry hoods; fellators paid to appear illegal but just over the line. You want to be oriental potentates   with power and slaves to kneel and adore an engorged sense of self. You crave being craved. Wish to be Gosling, or whoever the next Gosling is, will be. I have been accused of murdering my love hearts, as if I doodled scum across my forehead on Wednesdays; no, I am innocent of all surplus crimes except grandiosity. Pere of my own ubiquity, grossly over-privileged; in the blind and dumb mirror of the networks where I am bound by gimpy Hephae...

SHE IS A SUBMISSIVE READER OF EL JAMES In today's Sunday Times Culture section, there is a dismissive review of the latest E.L. James novel, Grey , which as you already know follows the 125 million-selling paperback trilogy about S&M, naïve virgins, haunted billionaires, and contractual sexual punishments and rewards. Rather wittily following on from Freud , it implies that what women "really want" is very badly written prose. On the same page, there is a review of the "traditional" light-verse popular British poet and crime novelist (she did the new Agatha Christie and an anthology of Sex poetry) Sophie Hannah , and it is of course a slim volume of selected and new poems that here is offered, from Carcanet. One of these books has sold a million copies or so already, the other, in all likelihood (and even given the charm, talent and fame of the poet as prose writer), will sell a few hundred, perhaps a few thousand.  If one believes, as I do, that int...

SOME WERE MURDERED ON THE BEACH WHERE THEY READ AND SUNBATHED, BY EVIL MEN President Obama is a great orator, and he more than rose to the occasion of his eulogy for the nine killed in their bible class in Charleston by a racist youth. He went beyond the call of duty, and gave a speech that is the equal to some of Lincoln 's. It touched on issues of morality, and decency, and in some ways, reminds us that though life can feel meaningless, those who feel touched by God's grace can find healing purpose even in tragedy. Ending with the song 'Amazing Grace,' which he sang, President Obama fittingly, and movingly, brought his eloquence into the form of address most suited to the occasion, a song that all in the great African-American church could sing along with as well.  He exemplified the power of words to move into song, into community, and to spread ideas of communion, and goodness. It is a matter of record that, meanwhile, the world is being ravaged by a religi...

Readers of Eyewear, the blog , know we love to recommend new tracks, as we find them on Spotify. It's been a good year for pop, rock and indie music, with The Darkness back, and  Brandon Flowers , and Carly Rae Jepsen and even Chic and  Moroder , but here are the ten key songs of the moment we find essential for summer listening. Put another way, these are the ten best songs of the year, so far, judged solely in terms of the love swoon factor: 1. 'SPRINTER' - TORRES - Torres is a young woman now based in Brooklyn whose second album this title track hails from.  With assistance from persons associated with PJ Harvey , the sound is avant-indie, with intense lyrics, and emotive vocals. I love the lyrics, which explore a young Baptist girl's relationship with her pastor, a good man brought low by pornography - "there's freedom to, and freedom from" - it has several transcendent moments (in the classic soft/loud mode) and a soaring sense of theolo...

Of course, life goes on - there is dancing, and there are joyous occasions, and music and poetry etc - but forgive me for saying the last few days have been bleak, news-wise (leavened by the Trump buffoonery, arguably). The racist massacre in South Carolina, especially, is horrible. And leads on to inescapable conclusions about the Catch-22 America is in, with regards to its gun laws. In a lesser way, the doubts now hovering over our British Olympian, and all-around lovely guy, Mo Farah, are also troubling. And, in general, wars, terrorism, murder, and cruelty rage. And, my friend, a poet, died. Yes, yes, we must go on - but are we reaching a tipping point of savagery? A Wayward Pines style devolution of humanity? Perhaps not, but news of more nuclear weapons being deployed in Russia is again a symbol of bridges breaking down. I am not sure poetry is the solution to much or anything, except, in this small (and it may be small gestures that comfort us, now) way - cra...

The poet can’t help writing poetry and time can’t help taking him for granted. Rest in peace, dear friend. – Benno Barnard Terribly sad news. The brilliant Dutch poet Hans Van de Waarsenburg  has died. I loved him. He was brilliant, kind, generous, funny, and a great friend to poets world-wide. Dutch poet Hans van de Waarsenburg was born in Helmond in1943, and has died in 2015, June 15. He published his first collection of poems, Gedichten (Poems), 50 years ago, in 1965. His collection De vergrijzing (The graying) was awarded the prestigious Jan Campert Prize for Poetry in 1973. In March 2004 he received the first Municipal Award of the Helmond Town Council for his entire work. Between 1997 and 2000 he was chairman of the PEN Centre of the Netherlands. In 1997 he became chairman of The Maastricht International Poetry Nights - an impressive biannual international poetry festival. In 2013 Eyewear published his Selected Poems in English, translated by Peter Boreas , The ...

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE - JUNE 8 2015 THE MELITA HUME POETRY PRIZE 2015 WE HAVE TWO WINNERS, TIED FOR FIRST PLACE MARIA APICHELLA AND TONY CHAN ONE POET IS BASED IN WALES, THE OTHER, ORIGINALLY AUSTRALIAN, NOW LIVES AND WORKS IN ENGLAND BOTH WINNING COLLECTIONS MERGE TRADITIONAL FORMS (PSALMS, OR SONNETS) WITH STRIKINGLY CONTEMPORARY CONCERNS, AND CREATIVE PASSION. CHAN'S WAS COMPOSED IN 78 DAYS OF WALKING ACROSS ALL OF THE UK APICHELLA'S EXPLORES FAITH AND DOUBT IN THE CONTEXT OF WAR AND LOVE BOTH POETS WILL HAVE THEIR COLLECTIONS PUBLISHED IN EXACTLY ONE YEAR (JUNE 2016) AND WILL SHARE THE PRIZE MONEY OF £1,500 2015 JUDGE'S CITATION BY TOBY MARTINEZ DE LAS RIVAS: 'It has been a pleasure – a difficult pleasure, but a pleasure nonetheless – to have judged this year’s entries for the Melita Hume Poetry Prize which is beginning to make itself an increasingly important part of the annual literary calendar for poets who are yet to publish a first book...

As they say in show biz, last but not least.... and it is true, David Spittle is among equals as he completes our list today - this gloriously sunny hot London day in June -  of the 12 superb young poets shortlisted for this year's Melita Hume Poetry Prize... who will the winner be, come Monday? Only our Judge Toby de las Rivas really knows for sure, at this stage, as we draw our breath, and await his considered report... David Spittle (pictured) is currently completing a PhD on the poetry of John Ashbery in relation to Surrealism at Newcastle University. He has published reviews in Hix Eros and regularly contributes to PN Review . David’s poetry has been published in 3am, Zone , the delinquent, and is soon to be translated into French courtesy of Black Herald Press . In addition to poetry, he has written the libretti to three operas, performed at various venues around Cardiff and at Hammersmith Studios in London. In 2014 David was commissioned to write a song cycl...

Outsider Art It's been what - decades? - since she lifted that dress in summer and desired herself as if I was a mirror in Darger's dishevelled room. Her lithe innocence armed with a drawn pistol as she fingered danger like an artist teaching herself to make insistent actions of a lonely hand not some remote errors only of eccentricity, also achieved release; passionate as any acolyte, showed me the new work her brushstrokes made, materials not yet dry. I, the appreciative critic of her rude education. It's sad to reflect on moments not so art-preserved; not stored even dustily in homely attics to be ignored; most incidents of sex or pathos have no catalogue or connoisseurs; static in time are still left just where they happened at first blush, never flow like art forever outwards into an always now. No one recalls her crouching as she gazed down at her clitoris and enjoyed a homemade bliss of blossoming isolated chance, her tennis ...

EDITOR OF THE BOHEMYTH Michael Naghten Shanks is a poet and the editor of The Bohemyth . His writing has featured in various journals and anthologies, including gorse , The Quietus and elsewhere. In May 2015 he will read as part of the Poetry Ireland Introductions Series during the International Literature Festival Dublin.     I AM YOUR REFRIGERATOR AT 3 A.M. WHEN YOU ARE HUNGRY I could not consume the stars above the beach in Enniscrone or stop the soot of London mixing with Camden coke. In different seasons, love is ice-cream: we want to lick our favourite flavour all year, even if it makes us sick. I give you a call and you come over. We watch a Werner Herzog documentary, Cave of Forgotten Dreams , about simple drawings of extinct animals. One of us says: Do you think the artist ate the art or the art ate the artist? We know the beginning and the end before we press play. We consume designer drugs not designed for us; our...

Elizabeth Parker has a BA in English and Creative Writing from Warwick University and an MA in Mythology from Bristol. She taught secondary English for eight years and is now a private tutor. She has had a poem published in Magma 59 and was shortlisted for last year's Bridport Poetry Prize.   SHORTLISTED FOR LAST YEAR'S BRIDPORT PRIZE ONE SUNDAY   we write inside the shadow of a tree a flea of light waits on your knuckle I pass you a fresh cartridge and you squeeze the plastic tube until a black bead swells from the nib we barely speak, you sneezing throat flecked with pollen my eyes sneaking onto your page into thickets of ink. poem copyright the author 2015