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

Martin Penny was the first, and truest, friend, I made when I arrived in London, from Paris, in 2003. Ours was an unlikely and instantly achieved connection - he was the ironic, Atheist, very English, Chelsea-supporting Oxfam manager of wry wit, indifferent to poetry (but a keen reader and collector of prose) - and I, as you may know, was the Catholic-in-waiting sincere enthusiastic poet from Canada nursing bad injuries from a car accident  - but what we shared was a love of wordplay, conversation, pushing the boundaries of taste, and lunches over coffee at a local café (where we have had a meal together at least once a week for over ten years). TODD SWIFT AND MARTIN PENNY AT THE POETRY LIBRARY Martin is retiring, at the age 55, tomorrow, from being manager of the best bookshop in the Oxfam chain - at least for awhile - the Marylebone branch, recently poignantly downgraded to a clothing shop with some books in the back.  In its heyday, when I joined as poet-in-residence...

The relationship between friendship and poetry is rarely openly remarked upon, or studied, and yet, it is perhaps the single strongest force acting upon the development, and distribution, of published works of poetry, since 1800. Without small groups of friends, often acting in sympathetic concert, as mentors, co-editors, sponsors, and allies, both Romanticism and Modernism would not have generated the works they did (one thinks of Wordsworth - Coleridge , or Eliot-Pound ). The friendship between Thomas and Frost was seminal for them both. Again, in the 30s, there was Auden , and his group. Or, in the 50s, and beyond, The New York School. Or, Lowell and Bishop . Or, in the 60s and 70s, Heaney and Mahon and Longley . Or, the current friendships among the Language poets. Still, such friendships are something of a taboo subject. It was therefore surprising to read the recent article by Chris Hamilton-Emery , poet and publisher, in the latest (2009) version of The Writer's Handboo...