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

Speaking of Wacko Jacko , here comes the younger Elvis , Lisa Marie Presley very much in the building, with a swaggering, a ttitudinal snipe at Tom Cruise 's favourite religion, her lyrics using terms from Scientolo gy: "if you think I'm evil when I operate ", "bit suppressive ", etc .  It's a sort of daring move, and the song is exciting for being such a break with her past beliefs - but it's also just a very clever, fun, break-up song.  

Haim came out of nowhere, improbable as Lana D.R . - in fact, not improbable at all - everyone in music is popping out all over, these days, springing up like hey presto.  This song has a zany - infectious thrill to it, because it is such in-yer-face pure girl pop, channeling Fleetwood Mac and Wacko Jacko , and any number of MTV hits from 1982.  30 years later, this still seems like the best song Pat Benatar never had.  Really a treat.

Lesley Saunders reviews Cape Town by Kate Noakes EYEWEAR BLOG IS RUN BY EYEWEAR PUBLISHING, WHICH PUBLISHES THIS BOOK The poetry in Kate Noakes’ previous books, Ocean to Interior (Mighty Erudite 2007) and The Wall-Menders (Two Rivers Press 2009), has been described as ‘sensuous and vivid’, ‘rich in detail’, ‘elemental’, ‘imaginative’, and (by Gillian Clarke ) as ‘loving the world’.   The sensitive observation and formal skill that elicited these comments are there again, with added vigour, verve and economy of expression, in her new collection Cape Town .   Having for a short while worked (and written poetry) abroad myself, I marvel at how well Noakes catches in one hand the vivid impressions of being a stranger in a strange land, whilst with the other she keeps a firm grip on technical matters of form, lexicon, sound effects, emotional tone.   She opens with a prologue poem, ‘Hirundine’, which invites us to read the rest of the book as emerging fr...

In stark contrast to our number one, Quaye 's joyous paen to internal sunshine of the mind, in the summer, and in the autumn - indeed, celebration of being forever sun-kissed, and real-kissed - is one of the most upbeat love songs I have ever heard.  It's hard not to imagine being lifted up by it.  This will turn some off.  But for the rest of us, who live through many a dull cold and rainy London day (such as this one), we'll take Quaye any day - and we should add, Quaye has written of this subject before, and may again - which is fine with Eyewear .

Here, at last, is the long awaited Eyewear Top Songs of 2012 Countdown : let's start with #1 for a change.  Slaves ' blunt punk aesthetic is, in an often very slick and aurally complex musical year, with lots of ( happy ) 80s pop flourishes, astringently welcome, and, with its astute query "WTF happened?", timeless and universal. These are meant to be the songs I enjoyed listening to the most this year, usually on Spotify, while posting here.  They are not selected to appear critically clever or even broad church, or to capture the true mood of the times, though this song does .  We each have our own silver lining playlists, now...

Guess what?  Since starting this blog way back in 2005, I neglected to keep track of how many visitors we had each day (that means you, reader) - then, a few years ago, I did start keeping track.  And now the counter says over 700,000 peeps since, well, about half-way through our tenure.  So, cool.  We probably hit a million off the record years ago, but this will do for now.

Who knows?  Eyewear has some ideas, but wants to hear from you, its mostly silent readers: what were your favourite poetry collections of 2012?  Most intriguing answer will win some goodies from Eyewear Publishing.  So do post your comments.