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

SHOW BIZ SEEMED BIGGER ONCE The Oscars - Academy Awards officially - were once huge cultural events - in 1975, Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis Jr, Shirley MacLaine and Bob Hope co-hosted, for example - and Best Picture noms included The Conversation and Chinatown . Godfather Part 2 won. Last two years, movies titled Birdman and Spotlight won, and the hosts and those films are retrospectively minor, trifling. This year, some important, resonant films are up for consideration - including Hidden Figures and Moonlight , two favourites of this blog. Viola Davis and Denzel Washington will hopefully win for their sterling performances in Fences . However, La La Land - the most superficial and empty Best Picture contender since Gigi in 1959 (which beat Vertigo ) - could smite all comers, and render this year's awards historically trivial, even idiotic. The Oscars often opt for safe, optimistic films, or safe, pessimistic films, that are usually about white men (less often, whit...

HE BROUGHT POST-WAR AMERICAN POETRY TO BRITAIN IN A VITAL WAY British poet of genius and cultural significance, Tom Raworth has died after a long and protracted illness, aged 78. Writer, artist, teacher, and publisher Tom Raworth was born in South London and attended the University of Essex. In 1970, he earned an MA in the theory and practice of literary translation. As founder of Matrix Press and co-founder of Goliard Press, Raworth was instrumental in bringing an entire tradition of American poetry to English readers. Promoting the work of a number of poets associated with the Black Mountain School, including Edward Dorn, Robert Creeley , and Charles Olson , Raworth also published the poetry of Elaine Feinstein, Aram Saroyan, Anselm Hollo , and Zoltan Farkas .   Raworth’s own work has also been identified with the Black Mountain School. He wrote over 40 collections of poetry, among them The Relation Ship (1969), winner of the Alice Hunt Bartlett Prize, Eternal Se...

EYEWEAR PUBLISHING EDITORIAL POLICY 2017 Eyewear is a privately-funded company. Its chief aim is literary – to discover, nurture, and publish, significant and interesting new and established writers and poets, across all languages, and all genres. We do so by holding our editorial team to the highest standards of professionalism and integrity; and by ensuring our printing is environmentally sustainable. We actively seek diversity of representation, and opinion, in our editorial choices, and align ourselves with no one political party, or movement. We are, in most things, radically moderate. At the moment, our ideal political leaders would be Justin Trudeau in Canada, Angela Merkel in Germany. As a rule, our editors do not believe Brexit is in the best interests of the UK, and we remain deeply concerned about the direction America is taking under its new leadership. We are on record as welcoming refugees to the UK. Our publications try to build bridges between cultures and co...

Eyewear, The Blog , usually enjoys compiling end of the year lists. 2016, now arguably the punch line to a Kafka-Beckett comedy routine, doesn't seem the sort of place to lodge too many enthusiasms, but of course some of the finest films, songs, and poems, have been created during wartime, and The Great Depression, and other major moments in recent history. 2016 will be remembered for the  Dylan Nobel, Brexit, the slaughter of Aleppo, the deaths of Castro, Bowie, Ali, Carrie Fisher , and the Trump election - probably little else, except the rise of social media/iPhone ubiquity in the techno-cultural sphere.     BEST MUSIC   A cruel trilogy of masterful albums, two almost posthumous, are clearly in the top five - by Leonard Cohen, Nick Cave , and David Bowie . Then there's Lemonade , by Beyoncé . Drake and Rihanna  dropped major new LPs, as did Solange . Warpaint, PJ Harvey, Animal Collective, offered fine new LPs . Lady Gaga r...

THE SHIT GOT REAL The Cavalry   As the early results curdle, I text my father three words - This Is Bad. Like thousands of others, I’ve spent the last year volunteering and working to elect Hillary Clinton. The long fight. The good fight. The first fight I’ve truly thrown myself into, again and again. Election Night finds me in southern Virginia, a ramshackle campaign office held together by duct tape, off-white cracked paint, and five other community organizers. Growing up, the evening news was my family’s sacred time. Six years old, I watch a Palestinian child dive behind wreckage as gunfire crackles. Peter Jennings’ lullaby voice informs us that the child is unaccounted for. My father responds to my text with two words - I know.             Hour ago a packed office, trusty volunteers using an auto-dialer to rapid fire call as many inconsistent voters as we can. After polls close in Virginia, volunteers shu...

Inaugural Occasional Poem: The White House Casting Couch Is Visited By Zeus as Golden Rain BY THE AMERICAN POET AND SATIRIST ERIC SIGLER   I   I thought I saw a smoke screen or a cloud descend through spears that rallied at the sky, and railed against the theme - four years beneath a shroud- until I woke to see that, in my eye, I could not emancipate the dream  from shackles chained to starlight - a strident stalker wading through the night, an endless specter searching for a theme....   II   But then I saw sun's gilded feet retreat -  high-heeled hopes broken by the darkness, love that lies alone on mirrored splinters, shattered by the monuments of defeat, that thrust into the eyes the vile success  of tyrants who elect to be successors - their statutory statutes on the plaques - marble mountains moved on others' backs - destroyers in the mantles of the victors......