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

Katherine Lockton reviews Don't Go There by  Colm Keegan In putting his debut collection together Colm Keegan draws on a great many resources including input by service users from Depaul and extracts from spoken word plays. There is much to praise in Keegan’s Don’t Go There when it is at its best.  His use of simple, clear language where he plays with and explores the imagination and curiosity of a child is the biggest triumph in his collection. It is a world where “they say that even the blades/of the helicopter came from/the seed of the sycamore tree.” It is simple yet evocative lines such as: Today’s streets are colder without their smiles under the orange streetlights. that really show what Keegan is capable of when he is in his stride. Keegan is at his best when painting pictures for the reader as his use of transparent language allows him to produce an uncomplicated, vivid image that we can see in our minds. ...

Patron: Andrew Motion Tuesday March 19th 2013 (doors open 6.30 for 7p.m.) Ruth O'Callaghan presents Gillian Allnut Elaine Feinstein Fiona Sampson Poets from the floor very welcome. Please leave the poem you read to be considered for the next anthology. LUMEN 88 Tavistock Place W.C.1 Tubes: Russell Square , Kings Cross, St Pancras. Entrance £5/£4 WINE

Eyewear is very pleased to welcome Tao Lin (sort of pictured) the significant American writer and poet, this vaguely snowy Saturday in London, as part of our ongoing series featuring American Poets all British poets and poetry readers should know about. Tao Lin is one of the key 21st century poets singled out for attention in the last chapter of Jennifer Ashton 's edited collection, The Cambridge Companion to American Poetry Since 1945 (2013). Tao Lin is the author of seven books of fiction/poetry. His third novel, Taipei , will be published early Jun 2013 by Vintage. He may be followed on Twitter here: http://twitter.com/tao_lin i saw you on the street i went away i saw other things i went away some more it rained it did something else it did almost all the rest of it it was a thing too and it wanted to happen ‘i am bored,’ it said ‘tao,’ it said i went away from it i got away and...

Ten years ago, as the UK prepared for a potentially illegal war against Iraq, Nthposition , edited by Val Stevenson , and myself, the site's poetry editor, hurriedly compiled a global anti-war anthology that was soon followed by many others.  The anthology, ten years later, has been written about in several academic studies, sometimes vilified, and was even mocked by the comedian S. Fry .  It was also downloaded tens of thousands of times, launche d in dozens of cities at once, from Russia to Japan to America to the UK - and was turned into a very rapid book by Salt (when it was featured on CNN).  The Guardian that year selected it as the most popular poetry book of the year, in terms of library loans.  It was called 100 Poets Against The War .  That's what I did, way back then, when younger, with my spare time; it is now available online for sale for one penny .

Met eoric rises are part of the poetry world, though rare.  Many seek positions of authority in the world of poetic w rit ing, editing, and publishing - few get anywhere, for poetry is more crowded than a tube at 6 PM on a Friday; fewer if any have such authority thrust upon the m; still, there is a visible sense of a changing guard in the appo intment of the twenty-something British poet Ahren Warner as editor of Poetry London , one of the UK's leading poetry magazines.  He replaces Colette Bryce , award-winning Irish poet from the North of Ireland . Warner has one book out, and another out very soon , both from Blooda xe, both recognised by the Poetry B ook Society (PBS), which is th e closest to being anointed in the Vatican City of poetry that is London.  He has been championed in the past in terms of publishing and critical praise, by Roddy Lumsden and Fiona Sampson , t wo smart poet-critics not known to usually see eye to eye; and he has debated Oulipean stra...

Have you seen many murderers in public?  I hadn't, until I saw Oscar Pistorius run, at the 2012 Summer Olympics, in London.  At the time, like almost everyone else in the stadium and by extension the world, I stood and cheered, marvelling at his speed, grace, courage and physical charisma.  He was the great blade runner, a hero to children and adults, and one of the major sporting figures of the age.  That was then - six months ago more or less.  Half a year makes a big difference. Now, the day after Valentine's Day, and the cruel irony is not lost on anyone, at only 26 years of age, he stands accused of murdering his girlfriend.  Given that she was a beautiful swimwear model and covergirl, and he a millionaire icon of the new South Africa, it is hard to imagine a more swift or cruel fall from national and international grace in terms of celebrity infamy - the fall is truly Olympian.  With four shots to the head and body, Oscar has go ne from a grea...

Eyewear is very pleased to welcome the British poet Richard Scott - pictu red - this Ash Wednesday. Richard Scott was born in London where he works as a musican and a teacher. Since graduating from Goldsmiths with an MA in Creative and Life Writing he won the Wasafiri New Writing Prize 2011 and was selected as a Jerwood/ Arvon Poetry Mentee 2011/ 2012. His work has been published twice in Poetry Review and twice in Poetry London . Matins After singing at church he walks the mile to the bathhouse and enters the fug of men. Not the smaller cabins intended for twos and threes but the steam room for the hands, the lips that emerge from interior clouds to work him in warm silence, kissing the head, anointing the shaft as he recalls the altar’s lavish cloth pouring down onto the cool stone floor, the polished, perhaps solid-gold, candlesticks holding their burdens of white slow-burning wax and the kneeling figures in their scarlet robes wa...