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

Simon Armitage is one of the better-known English poets of the last quarter-century: he is published by Faber, his poems are studied by students across the land, and he regularly appears on the BBC and in print; he's also a sometime-journalist, rock musician, and novelist.  If not exactly the Dylan Thomas or WH Auden of his generation, until Don Paterson , his unchecked rise made him the most-talked of and admired young poet of his time.  He was, in short, short-listed for the recently-vacant post of Poet Laureate, one his friend Carol Ann Duffy eventually came to occupy. In today's Guardian magazine , Armitage has an interview with Morrissey , onetime-frontman of T he Smiths , with Pixies , the most important and intelligent indie band of the 1980s.  Morrissey is the closest thing Britain has to Oscar Wilde in these dumbed-down times ( Stephen Fry is an impostor) - and has something of the aphoristic caustic wit of Larkin' s little-Englandism.  In short, h...

To answer the comment about my cheering for Canada at the Olympics... people do have divided loyalties. I have a dual sense of identity - part-Canadian )where born), part British/Irish, where I live. As Morrissey sang, "Irish blood, English heart" (or was it vice versa?). My wife, who is Irish, cheers Canada, since we met there. We both have affection for Hungary and Hungarians, as we lived for a few years in Budapest. Why the need to pin down other people's identity? Dual citizens abound, with multiple passports - and in 19th century and before, as Paul Fussel reminded us, there were no passports (very few before the 1930s) - you just went and travelled. As Sydney Greenstreet once called himself, maybe poets are "citizens of the world". All this to say, be not confused - Eyewear sees double (at least).

Morrissey , as readers of Eyewear will know, is one of my favourite singer-songwriters. I've said in print he is Britain's leading pop musical genius, a sort of Mancunian Bob Dylan . So, it's good to see the man celebrating tonight back home, in Manchester. He's aged well, in terms of growing handsome, solid, and broad - but his recent work unfortunately pales in comparison to that of the 80s and the 90s. It's true, he had an Indian summer two or three albums back, but then the latest was miserable again, without the charm or wit. Morrissey's lyric style is predicated on repetition of key lines, phrases, and words - as well as sudden leaps in logic ("flying bullet for you") sung in surprisingly elastic ways, tricking the syntax and diction across the tongue. At its best, this is electrifying, and at times uncanny. This is why he is so Dylanesque - his words are brilliant, but the way he purveys them is more so. However, his broad themes of stymied ero...

The CD is designed to look like a classic Decca label - the vintage simulacra suggesting vinyl, and perhaps a divine, long-past, moment of glamour for the recording artist. Morrissey' s latest album has been greeted with much engaged critique, some of it of note for poetry anthologists, and others who like to think about the problematic nature of canons, and of career trajectories. This Greatest Hits has 15 tracks. As everyone now knows, the majority are from the recent two albums, from 2004 and 2006 - short shrift for the early works (post- Smiths ) of 1988 - still, this is a 20-year-span retrospective. The absences trouble critics who (heaven knows why) wanted a seamless linear progression to be portrayed - as if Morrissey was not a provocative artist, but a national economy with a satisfying upward curve. Truth is, he is on the upswing - most of these "hits" are drawn from his late-flowering mid-career. I am thinking, now, of Gene Pitney , another flamboyant, odd, hig...