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

I once had the pleasure of having a poem I had written directed, and recorded by, the brilliant director-actor Fiona Shaw . Or rather, it was a treat but also a shocker. For Ms Shaw spent an hour trying to wrest a performance from my reading of my own work to get to the heart of the matter - a kernel of truth she sensed I could not quite hit with my voice, my vocal performance. Finally, in something akin to desperation, she admitted that actors, for her, were far better readers of poems than the poets themselves.  In fact, she confided, if actors did poetry readings more often, people might actually enjoy poetry. Such a viewpoint is partly behind today's event in British radio broadcasting - a New Year's Day special seeing Jeremy Irons (that immortal ham, best-beloved for Brideshead Revisited and Die Hard 4 or whatever ) - reading ALL OF TS ELIOT'S POETRY (!) over the course of the day, on BBC Radio 4 - directed by, you guessed it, Fiona Shaw. Meanwhile, it must be sai...

I was very moved today to listen to Archbishop Justin Welby on BBC Radio 4's famous Desert Island Discs . What comes across - and I cannot say I agree with all of his theological positions - is a highly-intelligent, thoughtful, sensitive person - who reflects upon the mysteries of faith, the afterlife, and injustice (as we might expect) - bringing to bear upon his duties the full weight of a proper 21st century education. Further, his unhappy childhood with an alcoholic father means that he is never merely a happy story, but a complex one.  He knows sorrow, as all of us do.  However, so close to Christmas, the over-arching message is this - it is feasible to be a fully-intelligent, well-rounded human being, and to still believe in the good news of Jesus Christ .  At a time of radical well-organised doubt and antagonism towards religion, this is a welcome gift, from the BBC.

As another great season of ten perfectly-crafted episodes of The Bridge (yet another great Scandinoir) ends, leaving Saga in the rain with great responsibility on her shoulders, and some life lessons still to be learned, Eyewear welcomes this reflection by brilliant American writer Steven Timberman on Sherlock ’s strange, surreal, and off-putting third series. BBC’s Sherlock reimagining has always been an odd duckling. In it’s first two series Moffat and his team created a Sherlock Holmes that slotted nicely between complete fealty to the source material and entirely abandoning the spirit of the original stories. Moffat’s Sherlock stood out – both from the original stories and the endless imitators currently clogging up the television. And then Sherlock took two years off. Cumberbatch became Assange and Khan, Freeman went to Middle Earth, and Moffat hopped in the TARDIS for a while. After watching Sherlock ’s first three episodes in two years, I felt discombobulated. Th...

Last night I watched a young woman be bound and gagged provocatively, then suffocated to death, after her boyfriend was stabbed to a bloody pulp with long scissors, by a serial killer obsessed with "making his own pornography".  No, this wasn't some sick Internet site, nor was it a DVD or movie for adults.  It was a BBC 2 TV show, on Monday night, at 9 pm, with strong violence and language from the start. This after several weeks of hand wringing about banning violent and degrading porn sites, as it may have led to the escalating sadism of a child killer in Britain recently convicted. The Fall , a highly-rated, expertly filmed and acted five part thriller series, starring X-Files hero Gillian Anderson , is by far the most unsettling terrestrial TV I have ever seen, in how it fetishes the abuse and slow murder of young attractive women, in a context that involves scared children, and very horrific images and concepts.  It also graphically shows how to stalk and break in...

I am a big fan of Raymond Chandler .  Like most readers, I discovered his Marlowe stories and novels in my teens, and read them all, quickly, with growing amazement and pleasure - that any writing so entertaining could be so stylish and literary.  Chandler has remained a favourite prose-writer for many poets, because he uses simile and metaphor so often, and so splendidly.  As well, he peppers his books with references to modernist poets, as well as allusions to the classics.  He's a great. Chandler was, in a sense, the British-born link between literary modernism and post-war, American-led postmodernism, and his stock is always on the rise.  Therefore, the news that the BBC was planning a Philip Marlowe season of adaptations on Radio 4 was thrilling.  I tuned in today, preparing to be delighted for months.  Instead, my listening pleasure was deflated almost immediately.  The director of this series (starting with T he Big Sleep ) should be imme...

Poetry legend John Cooper Clarke was on the BBC this morning (Radio 4) - back out there performing regularly, after years of silence.  This is very good news.  Clarke is a major talent and an influence on witty performance-interested poets like Luke Wright and Tim Wells today.  A dream: to have him appear for the Oxfam series.  I am working on it.

The BBC Radio 4 Today Programme today revealed a rather lax attitude towards poetry.  The reporter describing what the Oxford Professor of Poetry post entails described it, chuckling, as "a pretty good gig" - with a stipend and "only" having to "do" a few lectures.  This belittles one of the more arduous, intellectually demanding, and serious lecture series in the world devoted to poetry - perhaps the most serious.   Muldoon 's and Heaney 's contributions, to name only two, are among their best critical writing and speaking.  Anyway.  They then interviewed Paula Claire , who I admit Eyewear belittled when she entered the race - a fact I regret now.  When Claire explained why she had dropped out - for being described by the Oxford online authorities running the election as a "performer" and not a poet, the BBC radio chap chuckled (a lot of chuckling) and said it didn't seem "a big deal".  Claire rightly observed that in the ...

This was billed as the "first classic episode" of the new Doctor Who series.  It wasn't quite.  I am not sure the jazzed up logo and modified theme make the show more, or less, contemporary - something about the colours and tone sound too of the moment.  Sometimes retro is actually cooler, and more classic.  The new Doctor is an improvement on the last one, frankly, who I found a little insufferable.  This time around his manic eccentricity has an edge of uncertainty, bordering on insanity, that is fun.  The new assistant is even odder.  Unfeasibly tall, with a curious open face and big eyes, this pale Scottish lass is quirky, spaced out, and sometimes compellingly smart, all at once, while also looking like she's just bonked for an hour (or is that wishful thinking?).  I think she's a good character twist. Tonight's episode was classic BBC twaddle, that convinces itself it is genius - remember the hype when they put Titanic in space?  So,...

This is the 1,4001st post at Eyewear , btw. Hamilton 's take on the BBC poetry season seems dead-on - the media is often the problem, not the poetry. How media luvvies tip-toe around poetry is how people get scared off.

The BBC's cack-handed decision to scuttle the Oxford winning team on University Challenge (which included the best-ever contestant, Ms. Trimble ) on a technicality, is both sad and mean-spirited; when considered in the light of the far worse offences perpetrated by the likes of Mr. Brand , it borders on the hypocritical. When even Ur-presenter Bamber Gascoigne weighs in, you know something is amiss. Basically, Mr. Kay entered the contest in good faith - as a student. The BBC, by failing to record all the shows during the school term, and failing to keep Mr. Kay informed of how this might effect contestants who had just recently graduated or left university, is partly responsible for his failure to entirely pass muster. However, whoever snitched was nasty, and whoever jumped at the Beeb and kicked the champions down is dim. They've snatched a defeat from a victory, and spoiled a feel-good story forever. In the process, they may just have ruined a once-timeless and quaint...

What an odd and ill-judged decision the BBC has made , in refusing to broadcast an appeal to aid the people of Gaza. They continue to be a cack-handed outfit.

The BBC has finally acted decisively . This is a major cultural moment for England - a turn to seriousness. For years, comedy, and comedians, have ruled the celebrity roost in the UK, often converting everything they touched to dross - even making British poetry safe for lightweight laddishness. Before the credit crunch, such a culling of major BBC talent would have been unthinkable - but it seems the times demand rigorous accounting - for economic, as well as moral, failings. Ironically, the attack was on a great comedian (and his family). Brand will bounce back, and likely in film, but Ross might be severely damaged. He's been a family-friendly brand for years, and has now crossed into the blue.

Two of Britain's highest-paid BBC bad boys are now facing unprecedented political pressure (as is the BBC) today, after Gordon Brown waded in . What makes the occasion more bizarre is that a comedian from Fawlty Towers , and his erotic-dancer granddaughter are also involved. Not just a tempest in a teapot, then, but more a cabaret in a cuppa. But mostly, bad words from the BBC at a time when funding needs to be cut, somewhere. Silly, rude, and, finally, unprofessional.

A few years back, I spent a bizarre night, lecturing on contemporary poetry, to the QES (Queen's English Society), and Dr. Bernard Lamb (a writer of naughty limericks, as on Eyewear ). It comes as something of a surprise then, to hear him on the BBC radio this evening, debating with poet-critic-publisher Michael Schmidt (one of the best minds British poetry and poetry criticism has), on whether or not poetry must rhyme and use traditional metre. Lamb insists it should, and wants the "Poetry Society" to tell him what poetry is, suggesting that any society that doesn't know what poetry is shouldn't be a poetry one; of course, he's very wrong. Poetry is essentially unknowable, and poetry gestures to new, yet unheard, or written, ways of saying. It also, obviously, resists easy definition, and narrow formal limits. What's the point of poetry, or a poet, who always toes a line? Surely, any rule that a society - especially one designed to uphold the "Quee...

The BBC radio morning show, Today , broadcast a story (this morning) about Barack Obama's visit to an English town, years ago, for a family wedding, which resulted in him fleeing from a stripper in a pub dressed like (apparently) a posh schoolgirl. He did the right thing. Not sure why this was reported today, except it's Super Tuesday, and also Shrove Tuesday, and also Pancake Tuesday, and also, dear me, Mardi Gras. Lent is coming. What will you give up? The Republicans look set to set aside Mitt , in favour of John . Hillary still has miles to go before she weeps. I suspect she'll ultimately overcome and take the Democratic nomination, and then JM will be the next President. Obama wrote poetry (such bloody awful poetry one is tempted to say) and the BBC also had some of that read out too - something about a "flim-flam world" and his grand-father. Reminds me of exactly the sort of poetry Charles Bernstein , in A Poetics , mocks (all poets got grandparents, all p...

Tom Paulin was on the Andrew Marr Start The Week radio show this morning, on the BBC, talking about his new Faber book. Asked by the intrepid Marr of the state of poetry, especially with regards to the digital age and the Internet, what did he do? Paulin didn't talk about blogs, or e-books, or web sites, or the way the Internet is the key to getting more poems to more young readers, etc. - no, instead, he talked about how the net is a great search tool for discovering the roots of old words, like rood . Indeed, the net is a very powerful series of search engines, and this quirky answer is most intriguing, and ambiguous as hell. But a bit of a missed opportunity, maybe, too.

Yuletide faggots set the Christmas mood, as do songs on the radio. A shame then, that one of the greatest popular music songs of the last century, The Pogues single, "Fairytale of New York", has suddenly, and ludicrously, been bowdlerized by the Beeb . Situation normal all fugged up.

Kate Clanchy and I were on BBC Radio (Oxford) today for about 30 minutes, with host Jo Thoenes , discussing poetry, and the new Oxfam CD, Life Lines 2 . The show should be available for replay online at some point. She asked me for a limerick, while on air, on her name. Here is my hastily composed effort... There once was a girl name of Jo Whose speed was fast, not slow She interviewed Todd Swift On her show for a lift And now Jo is raring to go. --- I should have worked radio and head into this one, as Radiohead - digital pioneers that they are - hail from Oxford. Oh well.

The BBC lied . Perhaps not shocking news, but it should be. Those three letters (two the same) once symbolised - along with wartime propaganda - a sense of integrity, a sense of British decency. No more. A few years back, the elegant, if somewhat worthy film Quiz Show told the story of how the Golden Age of American TV in the Eisenhower Era was exposed for the sham it was - about as honest as a two-bit carnival in Idaho - but the story seemed remote from contemporary experience - we all knew, or thought we knew, that the Wizard of Oz was trumped up quackery, and that grand illusions and narratives were the order of the day; unflappable, cynical, we took our daily doses of TV with grains of salt leavening the laudanum - in a blissful opium dream, unwilling to consider the truth, or consequences. Well. If institutions like the BBC fix their contests and call-ins, for better TV, what else is fixed, in British society? Dossiers for war? Reports on police culpability in the shooting of inn...

I found this rather more apocalyptic than even the news is wont to be these days.... http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/6108414.stm