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...

The Guardian's been running a series, all week, of little pamphlet inserts, titled Great Lyricists (of what isn't made clear, but the mainly contemporary scene, apparently). Of the eight, two are Canadian, and one was born near the Canadian border ( Cohen , Joni Mitchell , and Dylan ). Three more are entirely American ( Springsteen , Patti Smith and Chuck D ). Two are British (which is very international of The Guardian : the bitter genius Morrissey , and Arctic Monkeys frontman Alex Turner ). One wonders where John Lennon or Ian Dury are - and further back, the two undisputed heavyweights of song lyrics of the 20th century (in English) Cole Porter and Noel Coward . Turner seems a little out of his league. What comes across - and this isn't the first time I have thought of this issue given I have been interested in spoken word poetry for the last 14 years or so - is how bare the lyrics mainly are. Chuck D's and Dylan's and Cohen's are the best, because the...

Simon Armitage (left) has been everywhere this week-end, in the British media - a genuine blitz. He was the cover story for the Guardian's Weekend magazine - he's founded a new band, at age 44, with an old friend, and they're The Scaremongers . Okay, suitably Gitmo-zeitgeist. And then, on the BBC flagship morning radio show, Today, at around 8.25 (today), he popped up, not to sing a few Scaremonger tunes, but to read a new poem, "The Not Dead" I believe it was titled, all about how veterans of the current wars have been let down by Britannia, and feel like awkward ghosts in ordinary towns. Okay, that may not be Ivor Gurney stuff, but it packed a punch, and is for a very good cause - the soldiers are bearing the brunt of shame better levelled at Blair (and the voters who allowed Iraq to happen) - and receiving few benefits for their patriotism and sense of duty. Armitage is one of the best, and most prolific, of the mainstream poets of his generation, and it is...