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

There is no argument to restrict marriage to heterosexual citizens, even in churches. Tradition is a poor blueprint for a more just or modern world. Should we still burn at the stake? There is no explicit permission from God in the Bible but neither does God give permission for liberal democracy or hydro-electric plants. Homosexuality was a sin because all sexuality outside of marriage was a sin. So bring the homosexuality into marriage and Hey presto! That sin problem go es. Meanwhile the idea that only a man and woman can be married because only they can procreate - well not all of them can. Any couple can adopt and raise children as well. As for the argument that only married heterosexuals are truly able to be loyal and loving well sadly too many shelters for battered women tell another tale. Wedded bliss is not automatic for any gender or sexual bias. If Ireland votes No today it will be an embarrassment and a tragedy which is Hard to manage. But they managed it in the body o...

This just in.... Paul Casey (Ó Bhéal, Cork), Colin Dardis (Purely Poetry, Belfast), Abby Oliveira (Poetry Chicks, Derry), Desmond Swords (Supa Fast Building, Dublin), Dominick Taylor (On The Nail, Limerick) and John Walsh (North Beach Poetry Nights, Galway) are the six regional organisers of the annual All-Ireland Live Poetry Slam Championships, now in their sixth year! Each year in November, after regional heats in Belfast, Cork, Derry, Dublin, Galway and Limerick have produced two finalists from each province, the finals are held to judge who of Ireland's top eight performance poets will walk away with the prestigious crown of All Ireland Poetry Slam Champion. As the event has no formal funding we are advertising our project on the crowd-funding site fundit.ie, in the hope of raising €1000 to cover prize money and expenses for travelling poets, plus the printing costs for 100 copies of a special commemorative edition chapbook of the 16-18 poems that co...

There are several strands of Irish poetry criticism by practitioners worth reading - one thinks of the serious Heaney essays, the playful, Quixotic Muldoon ones, and then those by a variety of more experimental Irish poets.  And then there is the Kevin Higgins essay.  Unlike any other poet-critic in Ireland, Higgins is now virtually unique, also, in the UK, for his prose style and approach.  Higgins, a very good, and clever, poet, is always lucid, straightforward, honest, to the point of bluntness, and funny; that he is also politically concerned without being (anymore) a fanatic is a plus.  He has modelled himself, clearly, on Orwell - but Orwell was not a poet.   Sean O'Brien comes to mind, or perhaps Randall Jarrell , but Higgins is not as dandyish as the latter, or as partial as the former.   Mentioning The War: Essays & Reviews 1999-2011  from Salmon, is therefore a welcome book, because it gathers together scattered hack work and puts it...

Eyewear is pleased to report that Salmon Poetry, of Co. Clare, Ireland, is celebrating its 30th year. As well as promoting its superb track record, a special  fundraising raffle is now underway with a unique prize of  all  thirty-one (!) of its 2011 poetry collections, signed by the authors. Have your own bookshelf of some of the finest contemporary Irish, American and British poetry.  Euro 5.00 for 5 tickets; Euro 0.00 for 12 tickets.

The other day, the world's biggest popular rock band, U2 , played the UK's greatest summer festival, Glastonbury; the event, historic for some, was marred - or improved - depending on your perspective - by a small group of protesters, who want U2 to pay taxes in Ireland, rather than avoid them.  The response, from the group's manager was that U2 was "a global business" and had an international tax profile.  Fine and dandy - but that admission, to me, signals the death of U2 as a band of singer-songwriters I want to have in my earphones.  When I listen to music I don't want to listen to BP or Exxon.  If U2 is now a global business they can't have my business, because I don't want to think of music that way.  Would we still love and respect Heaney or Ashbery if they were incorporated?   The Pogues are not a multinational corporation; they are geniuses.  What makes matters worse is that Bono swans around with world leaders, claiming to want to improv...

Not to be missed: Salmon 30th Anniversary Reading and Book Launch May 20th, 2011 Poetry Society Cafe (Studio room) 22 Betterton St. London 7.30pm Salmon Poetry celebrates 30 years of literary publishing with a showcase reading by four of its internationally-known poets: Rita Ann Higgins - Hurting God: Part Essay Part Rhyme (a memoir) Julian Stannard   - The Parrots of Villa Gruber Discover Lapis Lazuli Paul Kingsnorth - Kidland Philip Fried   -   Early/Late: New & Selected Poems Introduction by Jessie Lendennie , editor/MD of Salmon Poetry Ltd. Info: Contact  jessie@salmonpoetry.com

Eyewear is very glad to reprint this recent poem of Paul Perry 's here today. To The Republic - after Frank Bidart imagine they picked themselves up from the ground from where they had fallen dipped their hands into their wounds and pulled out the fire-wear which had entered them by decree imagine they un-strapped the other from the chair he had rested in righted him and put their shoulders beneath his arms and carried him imagine they walked through our city again what a parade it would be we might stand about in disbelief take pictures or lower our eyes in shame – poets come back to life give us our daily bread poem by Paul Perry; reprinted with permission of the author

Michael S. Begnal reviews Optic Verve by Catherine Walsh Catherine Walsh’s 2009 long poem Optic Verve (Shearsman Books) is described in its own text at book’s end as “a commentary” – so what does that mean?   In the past, it has been assumed by some that experimental poets such as Walsh (a blurb on the back cover of the book describes Walsh as “Ireland’s most radical experimental woman poet”) are merely concerned with words as such than with socio-political engagement, but any fair reading of such writers suggests this is far from being the case (I’m thinking of contemporary poets like Caroline Bergvall , Sean Bonney , Susan Howe , and Mark Nowak as a few immediate examples, and the list could go on).   Of course, most readers familiar with these names already know this.   And it is not to say that Walsh is not concerned with words and language – she certainly is – but here it is a case of engagement with language and engagement with socio-political/philosophical conc...

The Irish in Britain have been welcomed and included, at the highest levels of cultural activity, for more than a century - one recalls Yeats in London, one thinks of Faber's healthy Irish list now.  The green passport has allowed a comfortable sense of kinship to develop, so that more than one contemporary poetry anthology of British poetry has felt the need, indeed, the wish, to include Irish brothers and sisters.  It must come as something of a rude awakening, then, to see that this friendship was fickle, and about a nickel, or pound, deep, in some quarters.  No less than The Guardian's Polly Toynbee has argued in today's paper that the Irish have been "terrible neighbours to us" (Britain) because of the tax rate of 12.5%; and, many less-left politicians and public figures, in the Tory party and mad media, have expressed outrage that so much largesse should be shown, so much noblesse obligingly proferred, to Ireland. I find talk of bad neighbourliness a bit ...

Nuala Ní Chonchúir reviews When God Has Been Called Away To Greater Things by Grace Wells and The Last Falcon and Small Ordinance by Paul Perry Two Dedalus Press collections under review, one a début and the other – Paul Perry’s – the poet’s third full collection. Each volume is beautifully produced and they are a credit to the publisher who has taken care with the design of the books. Books are consumer items and the reader wants to own a well-made, attractive book as much as anything else.             Grace Wells is a poet of specifics; her collection When God Has Been Called Away to Greater Things is a journey from dark to bright times and, ultimately, to love; all of which is invested with concrete, engaging detail. Along the way there are poems of domestic violence and fear, loss and hope. She never shies away from the raw detail of sexual violence and, in that sense, her work is revelatory. In the poem ‘Rescue’, the narra...

Professor Patrick Crotty has compiled a massive anthology of Irish poetry, The Penguin Book of Irish Poetry , that covers an impressive chronological sweep, and features many new translations, by the editor, David Wheatley, Tiffany Atkinson , and others; it also has a preface by Seamus Heaney .  At over 1,000 pages, it can hardly be said to be less than definitive. It would be foolish to carp, but odd gaps remain in the book, chinks that naturally intrigue critical arrowing in.  I am still reading the book, but a few questions - they are really just that - have emerged.  Firstly, why are the ballads put at the end, as their own section?  Some, like 'Down by the Salley Gardens' or Kavanagh 's Raglan Road lyric, could easily have worked within the main historical sections.  It seems an unnecessary distinction in genre.  More notably, where is the ' Caoineadh Airt Uí Laoghaire '? More curiously, there are no poems by Oliver St. John Gogarty or A.E. - ...

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.

Back from Ireland.  I must stop eating lobster smothered in butter.  But those trolley dollies with their heaps of cream and custard and berries!  Agggh.  Croquet is not, may I add, an aerobic activity...Just read Forster 's first, Where Angels Fear to Tread - a bit odd stylistically.  Does anyone else have any thoughts on his sentimental-ironic melodramatic tonal shifts?  Also enjoyed the first 95% of Netherland , until the cornball London Eye/ family values ending.  A missed opportunity to create a true classic.  Still, I actually find cricket bearable after that.

Yesterday, British PM David Cameron stood in parliament and did a noble thing - took complete heed of the truth of a situation and morally spoke out, calling the Bloody Sunday massacre "unjustified and unjustifiable".  This was a brave and correct step, and not entirely what one might have expected from a Tory; many in the military establishment, for instance, are being more ambiguous already.  Meanwhile, speaking of military men, General Petraeus , in America, being grilled by none other than Senator McCain , fainted, when asked when troops would leave Afghanistan; in an instant of perhaps minor weakness, the unfortunate soldier may have disbarred himself from a presidential run in 2012.  Some commentators think the report into Bloody Sunday signals the end of British imperial adventures, an end to an often shameful colonial past.  Not quite.  The guns are still abroad, in Afghanistan, for example.  And the Queen - for good and ill - is still on the Canad...

Bravo to Barbara Smith , whose poem has been immortalised in Dundalk (which happens to be close to where I was married).

Few places in Ireland are so evocative of a glorious, if troubled, past, as Lissadell House - made famous by both its storied inhabitants, and especially by Yeats , who visited twice, and appreciated the young kimono-dressed "gazelles".  I was honoured to be asked to read a poem for a private gathering of the intrepid  Walsh/ Cassidy family this weekend, in the great hall (which so pleased Yeats), beside a harp.  It is a pity this family, which has put a small fortune into restoring the mansion and its grounds, planting new gardens and collecting rare books, letters, papers and paintings relating to the Gore-Booths and the artistic coterie of the time, surrounding Eva Gore-Booth , Yeats, and others dedicated to a Literary Renaissance for Ireland, should be vilified for their cultural foresight and husbandry.  Good to see that Leonard Cohen (the second Canadian poet to perform there) will be playing to a crowd of tens of thousands over several nights there th...

Eyewear is pleased to spread the news about the 2010 Over The Edge New Writer of The Year competition sponsored by Charlie Byrne’s Bookshop & Michael D. Higgins TD. In 2010 Over The Edge is continuing its exciting annual creative writing competition. The competition is open to both poets and fiction writers. The total prize money is €1,000. The best fiction entry will win €300. The best poetry entry will win €300. One of these will then be chosen as the overall winner and will receive an additional €400, giving the overall winner total prize money of €700 and the title Over The Edge New Writer of The Year 2010. The 2010 Over The Edge New Writer of The Year will be a Featured Reader at a reading to be scheduled in Galway City Library in Winter 2010/11. Salmon Poetry will read without prejudice a manuscript submitted to them by the winner in the poetry category.

I have two poems just up at Irish poet Paul Perry's site, which features poets. Recommended.

Sad news. The poet, critic, and editor Michael Murphy has died. There is a good obituary in The Guardian . I am currently reading the collection he edited of Kenneth Allott's poems, for Salt.

Sad news. One of Ireland's leading supporters of other writers (as well as being an editor, anthologist, writer, and poet), David Marcus , has died.