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

September 9th, tomorrow, is the 6th anniversary of my father's death, from a blood-clot in hospital, while recovering from surgery on his brain for cancer.  He was a kind, gentle, witty man, very shy, insecure, nervous.  But he was proud of his rise from a working-class Irish-Canadian background to become the youngest director of admissions at a North American university, in the late 60s, after leaving behind a promising music career as a recording artist with Decca and London records.  He did an excellent job at Sir George Williams, later Concordia, university.  He put students first.  He had a great voice, loved to sing, play baseball, swim, and was good with animals.  He was very loyal to his friends, compassionate with students, and protective of his family.  Sadly, he suffered from anxiety and depression, which he tried to deal with by drinking too much.  However, after a difficult period in his Forties, and after a mild stroke, he sorted out...

Catherine Woodward reviews Orchids By J.T. Welsch Every so often a poetry collection comes along which is truly breath-taking, having read and re-read Orchids many times now I can safely say that it is the product of a remarkable talent, in fact we seem to be witnessing one remarkable talent after another appear amongst new, young poets. Orchids is book number five in Salt’s ‘Modern Voices’ series, a fitting place for it as this compact collection is as convincing and natural a voice of the times as a reader could ask for. It would seem that J.T. Welsch is part of an exciting new turn already in effect across Britain’s poetry scene. Orchids is a collection of monologues from varied and surprising speakers (its reach doesn’t stop even at Death’s door) each working out a self by the confused terms of contemporary masculinity. But I feel that this isn’t good enough as an initial description. The issue of how man is to be man today, while a consistent theme, is not always d...

Ben Parker reviews End of American Magic By Christopher Locke In 1995 Christopher Locke published his debut pamphlet How to Burn , which was followed by three more through various publishers, and from which a number of poems included in this first full collection have been taken. The long gestation of End of American Magic means that the writing is mature and consistent, with a relaxed style, and unlike many first collections there is no attempt to showcase a wide range of forms and voices. Most of the poems are stanza-less, averaging around 20 lines, while their rhythm, though far from strictly counted, does oscillate around a trimeter line, with the line endings coming like slight pauses in the laconic delivery, as if a particularly eloquent bar-fly is regaling you with tales from his life. Locke has obviously found a mode in which he is confident working, and sticks with it. ‘Telling Stories’, the opening poem, explores the thin line between lies and inventions, as w...

The Mercury Prize, 19 years old, has had a mixed past.  It's chosen duds, and brilliant albums.  What it has done is select the 12 "best" albums of popular music each year, made in Ireland or Britain, from an eclectic genre-list, of avant-jazz to hip hop to nu-folk, and all stops in between.  Famously, PJ Harvey , who won again last night, making her the Don Paterson of the music world, first won exactly a decade ago, on September 11th.  That time, the album was Stories From The City, Stories From The Sea , her finest work, until Let England Shake appeared earlier this year.  It is, as I have written earlier at Eyewear , an album for the ages, one crafted with the sort of literary intelligence we normally associate with poets.  Speaking of Englishness in the context of war and empire, it could not have come at a more apt moment, and to win on the eve of the first decade of 9/11 is an unusually satisfying cultural moment of deserved recognition. ...

Jim Maguire reviews World Without Maps by Geraldine Mitchell The opening poem in Geraldine Mitchell's first collection, which won the Patrick Kavanagh Award in 2008, begins with the breezy reporting of a fact heard on the radio: 'For three million euro/ – give or take --/you can see the sun rise/eighteen times a day.'   The poem ends, 'If you travel fast enough/you can live in darkness/all your life,/or in too much light.'   The need for fortification against a world geared towards keeping its inhabitants in the dark is one of the unstated themes running through the collection.   Whether it comes as willful blindness to ecological devastation,   as adults treating children as dolls, or even as a 'black pool of silence' between a mother and son – the dark in these poems is often invisible and therefore all the more dangerous. World Without Maps , however, isn't a dark book, nor is it self-consciously preoccupied with its themes.   From earl...

Are his poems on the Richter Scale? The August 20-21 weekend issue of the FT had an article by Martin Amis , on the poems of Philip Larkin , excerpted from his forthcoming Selected for Faber.  I am not sure why Larkin needs a Selected.  All his work is now available, and all is worth reading; nor is there so much of it to wade through, and he is the most readable of modern poets.  That being said, Amis, because of his father's close association with Larkin, is an intriguing choice of editor for such a book.  Amis makes the argument that Larkin is not so much a poet's poet, as a novelist's poet, because of his pithy lines, and his impressive imagery - though in fact effective image and metaphor, and memorable lines, have always been poetic gifts to the reader, and were only later borrowed by novelists. Amis is I think correct to cite Larkin as the great English poet of the second half of the 20th century.  Indeed, after Hardy , and Auden , he seems undeni...

Eyewear is glad to revive its weekly featured poets series.  This overcast Sunday in London, it is good to welcome Jennifer Wong , pictured.   A London-based poet originally from Hong Kong, her poems have appeared in magazines such as  Frogmore Papers, Orbis, Iota, Warwick Review, Coffeehouse Poetry, Aesthetica, Mascara, New Writer, Strong Verse, and  Open Wide Magazine . Her poetry collection,  Summer Cicadas , was published by Chameleon Press and she is working on her second collection. Her poem 'Myth' was long-listed for the Plough Prize. She read English at Oxford and took an MA in creative writing at the University of East Anglia. She sometimes collaborates with visual artists. Her second collection will be published by Salmon Poetry. The Last Monologues I. This is the black forest of my heart, this is my circumference. See snow patches and brown leaves on the grass, snow and orphaned leaves without a home. ...