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

Paul Muldoon 's poem of 1994, "Incantata", is arguably the most influential mid-length poem written in Ireland and the UK in the last two decades - and perhaps the finest, too.  It has certainly had a huge impact on a certain sort of longish, clever, playful, sinuous, syntactically and formally adept poem that Paul Farley, John Stammers, Don Paterson and Roddy Lumsden (to name a few of the best mainstream poets writing after Muldoon) like to write. I was not that surprised to come across a poem in a similar vein - one of remembrance of a dead loved one, with intricate rhymes and word-play - by Craig Raine in his new book (first for a decade) How Snow Falls - which is one of those titles that makes me cringe a bit as a Canadian writer, and also reminds me of popular titles such as Snow Falling On Cedars, Snow, Miss Smilla's Feeling for Snow, Mr. Snow , and The Wrong Kind of Snow - among others.  The again, Raine does not seem to mind familiar titles, since the poem...

Eyewear has been biting its tongue, biding its time, and being mum, on the topic of the American-Russian spy scandal that has gripped certain sections of the media and public this past week.  Given the relative ineptitude of these Rocky and Bullwinkle -style spooks, and the lack of any atom-smashing-secrets purloined, the focus of the story has increasingly been on the pneumatic young Russian, Anna Chapman , pictured, formerly married to a British chap, who described her as the most beautiful woman he had ever laid eyes on.  This red-haired 21st Century Fox, with her Wonder Woman physique (described in the Guardian , tactlessly, as "bowling balls") - or, as one paper gushed, "Victoria's Secret figure" - seems to have raised eyebrows merely by fulfilling a casting couch need for a Russian Spy - in short, she is a Central Casting wet dream. But drop those arched brows, lads and ladettes - and stop licking thy lips.  Many -perhaps most - women are attractive, ...

Eyewear salutes women this International Women's Day (IWD). Most particularly, Kathryn Bigelow , whose powerful Oscar-winning war film, The Hurt Locker , reconfigures the male-dominated Western genre in such a way that is able to be both existential, pacifist, and true to the actualities of conflict. Her Best Director Oscar is an historical achievement, and much-deserved.