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

Snehal Vadher reviews Life and Times of Mr S   by Vivek Narayanan   In Life and Times of Mr S , Narayanan’s second collection of poems, at least two features of his work become established. The first is Narayanan’s deft style in which lived experience is rendered through a densely sensuous and abstract language. This feature reaches an apogee in the scintillating last poem, ‘That Touch Otherworldly…,’ where he writes, “and I swam/ swam in every direction burned/ in pinpricks/ wrung hollow by the night/ and I was one among the ants/ signalling to them/ and even the light green of/ my shirt hurt me…,” (re-)creating the experience of feeling an unborn baby’s kick from outside The second feature of Narayanan’s work is the relentless reworking of fixed forms, as was amply evident in his first collection, Universal Beach , where he explored the idea of a sonnet of variable line length. This trait becomes more involuted in Life and Times...

The fact that teams and individual athletes are beginning to pull out of attending India's pending Commonwealth Games in Delhi is unquestionable - but is the nature of the health scare debatable?  One of the Indian officials responsible for cleaning up the contested athletes' apartments complex noted that standards of cleanliness might be different for some nations in the West - a fascinating moment of "relativism" at work.  The comment is both startling and, in a sense, apt - are there universal standards of cleanliness? If societies are to be encouraged to develop their own belief systems, and cultural values - if multiculturalism is to be allowed to flourish even in a globally-connected capitalist system, which India is clearly a triumphant recent member of - then can they also continue to maintain their own particular, indigenous levels of hygiene?  Might the pampered Australians, or Europeans, expect a sparkling deep clean that in India, with its monsoons and...

Jeet Thayil , the Indian poet, has edited an important new anthology of Indian poetry (in the English tradition), just out from Bloodaxe, a book Eyewear will review in time. Before then, it needs to be said that The Guardian ran a hugely blundering (and borderline offensive) review of the book - a dismissal by other means - on Saturday, an odd act since the UK has been in need of such a collection for more than a decade. I have long believed that the best of Indian English-language contemporary poetry, from the likes of Ranjit Hoskote , Vivek Narayanan , and Sudeep Sen , is among the best of contemporary poetry from anywhere - and its lack of availability, until now, was almost silly, if not sad. So, Thayil should have been thanked first, criticised, if at all, later. Anyway, he's responded .

Terror knows no bounds, is an attempt at boundless contempt for society's limits. It appeals, therefore, to those who believe that limits are wrong, or currently are of the wrong shape - paradoxically, many who enact terror desire more, not less, limit. Yet they work in chaos who desire a new order. Mumbai , a great city of the world, is currently facing a new kind of freewheeling madness and cruelty that makes artistic depictions of the urban same, in films (like the recent Batman ) jejeune and false. What is being expressed in these terrifying acts is that free agents of ruthless determination can move at will through serious cities, nearly unhindered - yet ultimately, hindered. That battles are still raging, more than 24 hours after the initial attacks, is alarming. Anarchy, it now appears, can appear anywhere, in even the midst of great civilisations, and establish small failed states. The 21st century is falling apart. Obama can only do so much, and most of the world seems to...

There was a well-attended (200-300 audience members?) poetry reading at The Nehru Centre of The High Commission of India in Mayfair, London earlier tonight, to launch issue #2 of Atlas . Atlas is an international book[maga]zine of ‘new writing, art & image’ edited by Sudeep Sen and published by Aark Arts. I had the pleasure of reading with Peter Porter , Daniel Weissbort , Mimi Khalvati , Kim Morrissey , Chris McCabe , Daljit Nagra, George Szirtes and Sen. There was also a passionare, mystical Sufi Dance Performance by Manjari Chaturvedi .

I was recently interviewed by one of India's leading bookstores. My father and mother visited the shop a few years back, to hear Gunter Grass read. The shop personnel were exceptionally welcoming and expressed interest in interviewing me in future. Then my father fell ill, and this was forgotten, until a few months back. Here are links to the site. http://www.oxfordbookstore.com/oxfordonline/services/rhyme_or_reason/poetpourri/poetry_todd_swift.asp http://www.oxfordbookstore.com/oxfordonline/services/rhyme_or_reason/poetpourri/index_poetpourri.asp

Atlas 02 is a a cultural magazine that comes from India and is edited by the poet Sudeep Sen . The contributing editors masthead is impressive: Peter Bradshaw, Les Murray, Donald Hall, Fiona Sampson, Peter Porter, Ruth Padel, and others. Its chief function is to publish new writing, but it also includes a variety of art and image related features. The second issue is just out, with a feature on Canadian writing (yes, I am included), with new work by (among others) Evelyn Lau, Robert Priest, Alison Pick, Margaret Atwood, John Barton and PK Page . There's also an interview with Salman Rushdie . It's an impressive achievement, and one of the best-designed journals of its kind I've seen. The cover is striking and persuasive, with its bold use of photographic colour and a stark black background. The interior layout has a kind of Internet browsing interface feel to it - all seems contemporary and to hand. Exactly 400 pages in length, this is a high quality international journa...