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

BEING EMPIRICAL ABOUT POETRY   As someone who has perhaps wrongly invested most of his life so far in the editing, publishing, teaching, promotion, and writing, of poems, I feel entitled to finally write this brief essay and get a few things off my chest.   It has become something of a joke (in some circles) to note the ongoing tendency to claim that Poetry Is Dead.   For instance, Don Share, the inspirational editor of Poetry magazine in Chicago, regularly posts such articles on Facebook with a virtual sigh.   Well, maybe it isn’t. But I am tired of the claims made for poetry by the poets I know.   And tired of the claims I myself have made for poetry, and perhaps continue to make, every time I write a poem.   This is because nothing in my own experience, in what I would like to grandly call the empirical realm – what is sometimes known as reality – confirms those claims.   I suppose the major claim is that most people real...

LETHARGY, DRINK, DRUGS... THE TOPICS OF A LOT OF GOOD MODERN POETRY - AND THEMES MILSOM EXPLORES   Rhys Milsom is a poet, writer, reviewer, creative writing tutor and workshop facilitator based in Cardiff. He has a BA in Creative Writing from the University of South Wales and an MA in Creative Writing from the University of Wales: Trinity Saint David. His fiction and poetry has been widely published, including in  Wales Arts Review ,  Litro Magazine , The Lonely Crowd  and  The Lampeter Review , amongst others. His debut poetry collection, Amnesia , is published by  Onion Custard Publishing  and has been described as ‘…a frank comment on increasingly important conversations: youth lethargy, drink, drugs and notions of masculinity’ and states ‘the voice of the poems is a raw, transparent and open one throughout.’ Rhys has spoken and read at various literary spaces, including Dylan Thoma...