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

I was fortunate to attend the Proms last night in London at the Albert Hall, and hear the UK premiere of Symphony No. 4 "Los Angeles" by  Arvo Pärt , European music's greatest living composer, conducted by Esa-Pekka Salonen .  First premiered in LA, it might be a curious theme for a spiritual recluse - that glitzy city and symbol - but the work manages to capture both the drama and subtlety of 21st century existence in a way that is profoundly meditative, yet moving - and, of course, cinematic.  After the concert, I met the composer by chance at a London hotel where we were both dining.  He immediately impressed me as being one of the most gentle, modest, and yes, spiritual persons I have ever met - as if Dostoyevsky had emerged from the depths.  He was also humorous and we spoke of poetry and music. His eyes glimmered with amusement and kindness the whole time, and interest - extraordinarily bereft of egotism.  I have much to learn from such a master. ...

Sad news, the American-born Canadian character actor Maury Chaykin has died.  His mother was Canadian, and he gravitated to Toronto in the 1970s, making his name as an ACTRA stalwart in any number of TV shows and films.  By 1990 he was making it into major movies, and at the end of his career, and life, was recognisable to a whole new audience for being on the popular Entourage .  Chaykin was physically striking, and unruly or slovenly, able to skew bad or simply schmuck as the script demanded - indeed, he was one of the great character actors of the last few decades.  Gifted with a superb voice and presence, he often stole the show.  He will be much missed.

Charlotte Newman reviews Vuyelwa Carlin, The Solitary Siobhán Campbell, Cross-Talk Hilary Menos, Berg Ruth Bidgood, Time Being all from Seren Siobhán Campbell’s poems are so rhythmic, so driven by momentum that it is fruitless – almost – to quote brief samples, as their ‘pay-off’ – a term introduced to the reader in a pertinent epigraph from Louis MacNeice – is less potent without the developed context of the full poem. A cursory scan will not do, because at first glance these poems appear to be comprised of simple statements, when in reality these are just the building blocks for a rhythmic and lyrical whirlwind. Never florid, always terse and surprising, Campbell knows how to be laconic, and how to distil sense economically; there are no articles, definite or indefinite, or prepositions where there need not be, so there is not rhythmic interruption, nothing to slow the reader’s course to the pay-off:              ...

Glad to have a new poem by Berlin-based poet Alistair Noon this Saturday. Kurswagen There goes the clanking carriage in its blue and white livery, a stretched-out sans-serif, an image that slices the mild evening, striking out on a south-east passage. It leaves from the Healthy Springs, the system’s northern terminal, setting off to discover Kiev once daily. Along its sides are four tongues in two scripts that passengers at minor stations, deaf to the slamming doors, might catch and select to name the one-night barracks. Between the old formations flies the well-aimed arrow heading for squeaking beds, busses in depots for lack of fuel, monks and tunnels and candles, and a flag striped blue and yellow. Tomorrow timetables the change when moustaches and some decent coughing knock the Western wheels out, wielding long hammers while passengers flip their pages. A man with a cap uncouples it in the dark, and like a lunar module it splits, wh...

Eyewear is very glad to welcome Helen Oswald (pictured) to these pages this Friday, one of the last of the short-lived British summer.   Oswald’s debut collection Learning Gravity , from Tall-Lighthouse, has been shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection 2010. Her earlier pamphlet, The Dark Skies Society , was published by Waterloo Press.   Her poems have appeared widely in anthologies and poetry magazines, including Poetry Review, The Rialto, Magma and Poetry London . She has received three commendations in the National Poetry Competition, is a past winner of the Arvon International and has won prizes in other competitions including the Bridport. After training as a journalist, Helen went on to work as an editor at Amnesty International and then developed a career in the trade union movement. She is a graduate of the MA in Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia (UEA) and currently works from home in Brighton as a writer and editor.  I ...

Sandeep Parmar reviews Snow Calling by  Agnieszka Studzinska Readers will be surprised that Snow Calling is Agnieszka Studzinska’s debut collection. There is a maturity of voice and a depth of emotional cognition that emanates from Studzinska’s book—it moves under the palm like a whole and conscious organism; each poem contributes to a thematic balance that is at once both delicate and brutal. The book’s first and last poems are titled ‘Snow Calling’ (the first is in four parts) and, throughout this, a titular echo recurs as a reminder to the reader of the metonymic stake of ‘snow’. It begins: Winter opens to snow                         blinds the field, branches splice like roots in a landscape dead with beauty— Snow stands for many things, including nothingness; it is silence, absence, separation; snow is the interface between the inside and the outside of th...

I am going through one of my periodic struggles with faith and doubt.  Call it end of summer blues, or something more profound.  I have found recent actions by Church leaders testing and trying - my belief in tolerance rubbing against my tendency to become impatient with unkindness and worse.  Then comes news, via the BBC, that the universe will expand "forever" and end up stretched out as a dead, cold, lifeless "wasteland" .  If this doesn't sound like a vision of a godless hell (hell being the absence of God), then what is?  Humanists, nihilists, atheists, existentialists - call them what you want - but they are humans - we're all in this strange and frankly disconcerting universe together.  At times its size and complexity inspires (look at the stars etc) - but the ultimate scientific truth is more ghastly and sublime - the sum of everything adds up to an endless nothing, a total nullity.  Of course, the years ahead will first see much else, love, s...