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

Eyewear is very glad to welcome to these pages, today, the Icelandic poet and novelist   Gerður Kristný (pictured). Kristný was born in 1970, and has a degree in French and comparative literature from the University of Iceland.  She is a successful children's novelist, as well as one of her country's leading poets.  She is married, and has a family. She travels widely to international festivals, such as the recent Maastricht International Poetry Nights (October 28-30) where I met her as a fellow reader.  I was impressed with her reading style, and the look of her spare, decisive poems on the page.  She explores the Sagas, religious images, myth, feminist concerns, relationships, and the icy landscape of her home, in her minimalist, clipped, ironic, and suggestive poems, which contain the proverbial nine-tenths of their force and heft beneath their surfaces.   Departure At the end of the ramp I inadvertently glance back but you have vanished...

I was going to title this post 'Poor Visibility" - an Eyewear title if ever there was one - but went for the more theologically resonant one instead.  Odd times over the European skies today - ash is general over England, and beyond.  There was a large volcanic eruption in Iceland on Wednesday.  Due to the weather conditions, a plume of volcanic ash has now spread southwards towards northern Europe and is severely affecting all airlines' flight activity in the area. For safety reasons and on the direction from Air Traffic Control Service (Nats) a decision has been made to cancel a number of flights and close all London airports.  All British Airways domestic services have been cancelled on Thursday 15 April. On the BBC, they are talking about maybe no flights until Saturday, unless the ash plume, now pretty immobile, moves on.  This seems relatively unprecedented, and more than a little sci-fi slash disconcerting.  No eye in the sky, indeed.  Iceland'...