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

No one who cares about British poetry would have been happy to read the news, widely facebooked about yesterday, that Salt was announcing a cessation of single-author poetry collection publishing.  This is big news, because Salt had been publishing 30+ such volumes a year of late, under the editorship of Roddy Lumsden , a Scottish Bloodaxe poet with claim to being the formally inventive master of these isles; along the way, Salt championed many debuts of brilliant poets, including two major figures, Jon Stone and Luke Kennard .  In all, they'd published around 400 such titles.  Last year Salt was shortlisted for a Man Booker Prize for prose, which is also big news, and changed their fortunes. Salt saw that the prose world was more open to their brand of indie brashness than the poetry world, which had rather noticeably not prized the Salt list as much as might have been expected, given its talent-rich offerings.  Of course, the immediate reaction was a little ugly...

Commonwealth?  Not, apparently, for Salt's esteemed Crashaw Prize.... check out the rules, as below: " The Crashaw Prize is an international annual prize for a first collection of poetry. Entrants must not have been published before, and must permanently reside in the UK & Ireland, the USA, or Australia & New Zealand. For more information please visit: http://thecrashawprize.co.uk/ " Eyewear wonders why Canada, or indeed, South Africa, are excluded from this otherwise rather inclusive list of countries... might be an oversight worth correcting with a new poetry lens.

2012 is already a year of poetry to look forward to, if only because of Salt Publishing... new collections, from Kirsten Irving , Jon Stone , Luke Kennard , and others, have me chafing at the bit.

Vesna Goldsworthy won the Crashaw Prize this year from Salt, for her new poetry collection in English - she's already well-known for her prose writing.  She's a professor of creative writing at Kingston University, and a colleague of mine there.  It is being launched tonight.

Catherine Woodward reviews Orchids By J.T. Welsch Every so often a poetry collection comes along which is truly breath-taking, having read and re-read Orchids many times now I can safely say that it is the product of a remarkable talent, in fact we seem to be witnessing one remarkable talent after another appear amongst new, young poets. Orchids is book number five in Salt’s ‘Modern Voices’ series, a fitting place for it as this compact collection is as convincing and natural a voice of the times as a reader could ask for. It would seem that J.T. Welsch is part of an exciting new turn already in effect across Britain’s poetry scene. Orchids is a collection of monologues from varied and surprising speakers (its reach doesn’t stop even at Death’s door) each working out a self by the confused terms of contemporary masculinity. But I feel that this isn’t good enough as an initial description. The issue of how man is to be man today, while a consistent theme, is not always d...

Good news.   Eyewear has a new poem today from Tamar Yoseloff 's forthcoming fourth collection, The City with Horns , published by Salt in May 2011. Yoseloff is also the author of Marks , with the artist Linda Karshan (Pratt Contemporary Art, 2007) and the editor of A Room to Live In : A Kettle's Yard Anthology (Salt, 2007). She lives in London where she teaches for the Poetry School. The poem below is from a sequence about the American painter Jackson Pollock . Connected I wanted people to sit still for one goddamn minute but they flash through your life –                         portraits are for the dead. Trees construct themselves into a solid mass as the horse picks up speed see, everything's knotted                         ...

Salt does not have the monopoly on financial concerns, or on being a lively small press doing great work - Salmon in Ireland - among other things the main Irish publisher of woman's poetry there - is also seeking supporters (albeit more subtly) to purchase their superb collections and anthologies.  Their offer is fair and tempting - they will ship books anywhere in the world for free.  Now is the time for North Americans, among others, to order books by Kevin Higgins, Patrick Chapman, Susan M DuMars , and many others - including my Seaway - without the expense of post from abroad.  The salmon of knowledge is ever more available.

The Writers Handbook is an invalauble source for British-based writers and poets, and I have most of its issues for the last decade. 2011 is quite a departure - at least in one way.   Chris Hamilton-Emery 's poetry section provides an extraordinary list of the ten best things in poetry of the "noughties" - which I found somewhat eyebrow-raising, to be sure. Among the people and events and developments selected as the most important of the last decade are Andrew Motion , for being a great poet laureate (which he was); a key figure at Faber & Faber; and Keston Sutherland - the only poet singled out as such - for all he has done and does, etc.  Also mentioned are the publishers Salt and Shearsman, and the appearance of digital networking communities. The article goes on to predict that in "ten years" there will not be much in the way of printed books of poetry, in the UK, and they will not be sold or marketed in "bricks and mortar" ways.  Inst...

Is philanthropy the coming thing, or dead in the water, in British Arts?  Never have the filthy rich in Britain given as much as say the American Rockefeller or Carnegie did for the arts.  Try to name equivalent family dynasties here that support dance, music, poetry?  Okay, - but what about poetry?  Where are the new patrons?  For a while now, it has been HM - via a government that can no longer really afford to pay out, and then get spit in the eye.   Cameron's cuts will see some small presses and magazines fold, no doubt.  Even Salt, that innovative younger press with the great covers and wide list, faces ongoing difficulty - see its recent Facebook message: Chris Hamilton-Emery July 14 at 2:23pm I hoped I'd never have to write this note. The recession has continued to have a very negative impact on sales at Salt and we're finally having to go public to ask you to help support us. Our sales are now 60% down on last year and have wiped ...

Roddy Lumsden and Salt have announced - over at Facebook - that they'll be launching a new series, The Best of British Poetry (starting with 2011).  This is modelled on the wildly successful series started by David Lehman back in 1988, when the first guest editor was John Ashbery .  Lehman, as Series Editor, has given the series credibility, and a coherent identity, that plays well off of the various poetics each of the guest editors brings to bear.  And, what editors: Lyn Hejinian, Rita Dove, Paul Muldoon, Louise Gluck, Adrienne Rich, Harold Bloom, Jorie Graham, Robert Bly, AR Ammons, John Hollander - none less than a major figure, in their way.  As Series Editor, Lumsden will have a job on his hand to provide that level of serious continuity, and charmed broad church integrity, which somehow Lehman has pulled off.  Fortunately, Lumsden knows most poets he will need to reach. However, to truly reach the heights of the American series (there are other vers...

Jane asked for it - and Eyewear delivers. Not coal to Newcastle, but Cole to Holland - the restricted view of Olivia Cole that Jane Holland wanted to see: the cover of her debut from Salt, reviewed below by Mel Pryor . Enjoy.

Sad news.  David Chaloner , the poet, has died.

I will be reading as part of the Kingston Readers' Festival a week from now, on Friday, 14 May, 1 pm, at the Kingston Museum, with fellow poet Chrissie Gittins , for an event called Salmon with Salt . The festival is also featuring writers and speakers such as AS Byatt, Zach Goldsmith, Vince Cable, Iain Sinclair, Sadie Jones, Libby Purves, Bonnie Greer, Dame Joan Bakewell , William Fiennes and Dame Jacqueline Wilson .

Salt is an important British publisher of poetry and poetics - and Eyewear has reviewed some of their books, happily (more pending).  So, what's going on with this rumour, circulated on blogs the other day, that it has been "defrauded"?  What could that possibly mean?  This appeared at Canadian blog, Bookninja : Aussie indy publishing sensation Salt has just posted this message via editor Chris Hamilton-Emory’s Facebook status: "We’ve just had terrible news: Salt has been the victim of a fraud and our entire bank account has been emptied. We’ve not a bean left. The bank is now investigating. Please bear with us while we try and stay afloat." What seemed odd was that Chris Emery's name was spelled incorrectly - and the fact the story was being broken in Canada, not the UK.  Can anyone confirm this to be true?  I have been removed (for reasons that remain unclear) from Emery's Facebook circle, so can't check for myself. [editor's note at ...

A special Salt Cyclone event today on Katy Evans-Bush's tour of the world wide web. Eyewear is thrilled to be a part of this vivacious poet and blogger's whirlwind virtual voyage. Katy Evans-Bush (pictured) was born in New York City and has lived in London since she was 19. Her poetry and essays have been published on both sides of the Atlantic. She is a regular contributor to the Contemporary Poetry Review and writes one of the most important British literary blogs, the very popular and always entertaining, Baroque in Hackney . Her debut poetry collection, which Eyewear recommends as one of its books of 2008, is Me and the Dead . Called "stylish, vivacious and darkly hilarious" by the Poetry Book Society, it is published by Salt, one of the significant poetry presses in the UK. Evans-Bush has always struck me as a true original, one foot in New York, one in London (metaphorically), bestriding the pond with a wonky, warm charisma that has made her loved, and respe...

Those in the know in London and beyond will want to be at the Zeppelins launch Tuesday 9th December, 7-10pm at The Rose, 35 Albert Embankment, London SE1 7TL. Chris McCabe's new collection, from Salt, promises to be one of the better books by a new poet of this decade. I've included McCabe in my Manhattan Review section on The Young British Poets, as I believe in his writing. The launch will also feature readings from fellow Salters and excellent poets Simon Barraclough and Luke Kennard - so much to enjoy.