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

Within minutes of posting a message about a poetry issue in the UK, I was inundated with nasty personal messages.  One poet said she was "disgusted" by me.  Goodness, and I was only recommending we try and get along.  Apparently, poets are not immune to the dangerous attractions of instant messaging and the Internet.  But, as I have said before, we need to be good to each other, and to try to reign in the ad hominem attacks.  I can only imagine what it would be like to be one of the offenders in this whole PoSoc debacle, if a mere bystander can get so spammed and reviled.  This is why I have removed the earlier posts on the matter from this week.  I have no wish to continue being a part of this.  There are enough parties on both sides to handle it at this stage.

Eyewear is glad to post below a letter sent in from former Director of the Poetry Society Judith Palmer , in response to yesterday's Battle Royale post. From Judith Palmer Dear Todd, I don’t think we’ve ever met: so you may have jumped to some wrong suppositions when you suggest the Poetry Review Editor and I had ‘diametrically opposed viewpoints for the future direction of the Poetry Society’. The geometrical positioning is far from polar. My policy was always that the Poetry Society should aim to reflect all poetries for all audiences. We employed different strategies to reach different constituencies, and hoped to build bridges between the different areas of our programme. A participant in the Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award, for example, might aspire to be published one day in Poetry Review. A visitor to Trafalgar Square who read our new commissions around the Christmas Tree, might go on to explore membership, and become a more regular reader of contemporary ...

There is going to be a Poetry Society AGM on July 22, in London.  I am one of the people who is planning to attend (I have proxies).  Emails are flying back and forth.   Dr. Fiona Sampson is upset by the famous "Downfall" Youtube video, satirising the current crisis.  And, increasingly, what seemed a clear rallying cry, from Kate Clanchy , to sign up, and force a vote for an emergency meeting, to compel the Board of Trustees to clarify why all the resignations took place, has become muddied, through no fault of anyone's.  The problem is, the AGM is going to be a head-on collision between those who want to know what happened at meetings, and those who may not want to reveal what happened.  What we know, in the public, is that there is a debate at high level about the Poetry Review editor's contract, and the role of the Director who seems to have been sidelined at various meetings, and various other members of the Board, several of whom resigned.  H...

Eyewear has decided it is important to post this following message, which was forwarded to me by many different respected poets in Britain yesterday, in several similar forms; it seems that this is a simple democratic push for transparency and is not motivated by personal grudges or malice: "You've probably seen recent reports in the Evening Standard, The Sunday Times , and today's Guardian  about the dreadful current situation at the Poetry Society, where President, Director, and Finance Officer have all resigned due to the behaviour of the Board. The Board has consistently refused to answer questions despite repeated requests and letters, regardless of signatories etc. The next step is to push for an EGM in which members can attend, hear what has been happening, ask questions and vote on an appropriate motion/resolution. This is necessary before any further and lasting damage is done to the Society. Kate Clanchy has already collected 170 signatures and I...

Also in The Sunday Times - news of a mass email and social networking campaign to arrange a vote of the members of the Poetry Society.  Everyone has agreed not to talk to the media, including Dr Fiona Sampson (this year's Ruth Padel , according to the catty Times ).  Sadly, British media only like it when poets are fighting like wrestlers in mud.   Eyewear is maintaining neutrality in this apparent power struggle, because frankly, Mr. Shankly, what is it about?  No one has publicly said what direction Sampson wants to go in that the outgoing president didn't.  I liked the editing of Poetry Review , so saw little problem there, though some of those Paterson essays were a bit tough to follow.