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

My grandfather, Ian Hume , pictured above in fine form, is one of Canada's sports legends. His obituary appears today in Canada's leading newspaper, The Globe and Mail . See below for link to online version: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20060531.OBHUME31/TPStory/ I also append, below, a poem I wrote about him and his pet crow (and other aspects of his life mentioned in the obituary), published in Stand magazine; I hope the editor's of that fine UK journal will permit its reuse in this digital format on this occasion. A Good Person In Snow A good person, does it do them good, to go out, late, walking in the snow? How best, for them, to do more good than ill? Does their goodness have anything to do with the winter chill? I wish to walk so, along this narrow trail, with you and her, who are both the same person, observed either by myself, or a farfetched crow, such as my grandfather took everywhere on his seven-mile government roads, when wood was to hand....

I have several reasons to find musical genius Scott Walker and his latest album, The Drift , of interest. I live in Maida Vale, and he famously did, during perhaps his most creative period. Secondly, and more importantly, up until this new release, I though I had created the most densely-packed, poetic, Brechtian and challenging "modernist-cabaret" soundscape full-length CD. It turns out the CD I co-wrote and developed with award-winning Canadian composer/ musician Tom Walsh (entitled The Envelope, Please , see links below) is, compared to Mr. Walker's latest, about as accessible as a Looney Tunes reel. The Drift is impossible to listen to, and impossible to turn away from - it has the impact of very bad news. It does not need long for a critic to establish how strange and off-putting this is, when one considers that Walker proudly spliced in sounds of raw meat being violently punched, and one approximately ten-minute song minutely explores the agon of Mussolini's ...

I have an interview just up at Northern Poetry Review , the vital new online review from Toronto. Do check it out: http://www.northernpoetryreview.com/interviews/alex-boyd/todd-swift.html

Tory leader David Cameron (pictured) appeared today on the classic (BBC) Radio 4 show, Desert Island Discs. Famously, Mr. Cameron is trying to revive the Conservatives by leading them away from the unfriendly opinions of their majority of "crusty old Majors" - into a land of hip, young families with windfarms on top of their affordable housing. Mr. Cameron almost has my vote, after he selected several of my favourite songs as his favourite songs too ... A live version of "Tangled Up in Blue", The Smith's "This Charming Man", Radiohead 's "Fake Plastic Trees", something by REM so obscure it must have been suggested by a spin-doctor, and a rousing anthem from the hot new Mormon-led band, The Killers . He isn't much of a reader, though, as he selected a cook book for his one read (he already has Shakespeare and The BIble, though) - and his luxury, booze. Perhaps he should have selected The Collected Works of Rachel Carson, and a recyc...

A few odd things noted in the papers the last few days.... Firstly, two infamous British egg collectors have died in separate incidents this week while climbing trees that hold nests of rare birds - it is illegal to "blow" the yolk from golden eagles and so on. Tragically, these and other men suffer a rare condition which psychiatrists have described as an "obsessional neurosis" that drives them to paradoxically become bird experts, then risk their lives to collect the eggs that sustain these endangered creatures; it's a condition that sounds dangerously close to all art. Secondly, no less a man than Jon Bon Jovi has given the final word on marriage. Asked why he doesn't engage in wild sex with anyone but his wife of 17 years, despite being a rock star he said: "I can't. Whatcha gonna do? That's the trade-off. That's OK. I can live with that. I got a good deal." Amen to that. And finally, when George Bush was asked what he'd miss ...

Eyewear is very glad to welcome Lisa Pasold (pictured here in a brasserie in Nantes) to its pages this Friday. She has become one of the core poets in the new 21st century Paris expat literary scene, along with Jennifer K Dick and Michelle Noteboom . It was good to meet her when I lived in that city for several years, in 2001-2003. Indeed, I was so taken with her poetry, I included it in my survey of 20 younger Canadian poets published in the 2005 issue of New American Writing . One of the things I like about her writing is how she gets so much of the world in to it, without ever easing up on innovative practice - while retaining humour and perspective - making fast-paced avant-garde work with a voice behind it, mixing narrative and more opaque strategies in a new blend. Pasold is nothing if not active and travelled - she's been thrown off a train in Belarus, been fed the world’s best pigeon pie in Marrakech, mushed huskies in the Yukon, and been cheated in the Venetian gambling...

Ska comes in waves. My brother, Jordan, who turns 35 today, was one of the key players in the Canadian ska/mod revival of the early 90s, and co-founded Stomp Records , which celebrated the 2-tone style, that most upbeat of music, with several important compilations. His band, The Kingpins , went on to release several great albums (and in a new incarnation just toured China). But the presiding spirits for his generation extended well beyond the brilliant, eccentric Bobby Beaton and Me Mom & Morgentaler , back, of course, to the original ska/mod revival of 1980 (The Second Wave) when The Specials , The Selecter , The Beat , and Madness , made ska the sincere rocksteady sound of Thatcher's bleak streets. But one of the presiding reggae spirits for their generation was Desmond Dekker . Rather than the visionary Bob Marley , whose fame sadly came to eclipse Dekker's, it was Desmond's "Rude Boy" persona - prefiguring almost every stance and trope in gangsta rap tod...