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

2009 is the tenth anniversary of my first full collection of poems, Budavox , published by DC Books in Montreal, in 1999. The collection represented the work I'd been publishing and performing in the decade 1990-1999, during the time I ran first the New McGill Reading Series (with Bill Furey ), then Vox Hunt Cabaret, in Montreal, before moving to Budapest, in late 1997. The title is taken from a famous very tall retro-style sign (now gone) in Budapest, on the Budavox Building. Budavox was a telecommunications company in Hungary. The poems in Budavox explored themes of sexuality, nostalgia, travel, poetics, violence, desire, and popular culture. The book was well-received by critics at the time, and was selected by Geist - then perhaps the hippest culture magazine in Canada - as "one of the five best books" of the year, and sold fairly well, for a book of poetry. I do hope that readers of Eyewear who are interested in poetry will seek it out, to see if it has stood the t...