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

HE WEARS EYEWEAR Something actually amazing has happened. Today. Perhaps not an Obama moment, quite - but close. The most left-leaning Labour MP (arguably) - a 500-1 shot - has just been elected Leader of the Labour Party - despite being vigorously opposed by most of the media, all leading Labour big beasts ( Blair, Brown , etc) and the Tories. And he won by a first-vote landslide of nearly 60% of over 400,000 voters (a huge number) - due to his brilliant grassroots campaigning, evident no-nonsense integrity, and lurch (in labour terms) back to solid socialist ground (leaving NATO, cancelling Trident, etc). Britain has - perhaps for the first time since the 1980s, if not earlier - a bona fide strong oppositional figure who represents exactly what the Conservatives do not - an alternative to rampant capitalism and industrial-militarism. Anti-austerity, pron-nationalisation of industries and railways, in some European capitals he would be considered normal. In the UK, where ...

The way that over 70 refugees from Syria - children, women, and men - have been found, suffocated to death, in an abandoned lorry (truck) in Austria, can only recall such horrors as the Nazi period, when Jews were some times killed in a similar way by the SS.  The horror this time is that, seemingly devoid of any ideology of hate, these human traffickers simply seem to have carelessly wired the unventilated back shut and killed their cargo for no other reason than indifference or clumsiness. What remains - hardly new but still never acceptable in human history - is the idea that some lives do not matter as much as others.   The sense that some humans are no more than rubbish, to be treated callously, whose lives do not matter, are not precious, should not be preserved.  If there is any ethical or religious position that states otherwise, so be it, but it seems to me that the finally most vital rule of conduct must be to always keep aware of how every one else - every...

I will not go into the roll call of A-list names who wrote, directed, and acted in, True Detective Season 2, except to say that the 8-part film noir cop drama set in the 21st century recently aired to mainly hostile, at times hectoring reviews. These can be divided into two categories - those that pined for the brilliant Season 1, and those that found Season 2 poor in its own right.  We can dispense with the first easily - you cannot claim Lear is not Hamlet and act all sad.  This is a new work.  Move on. The second complaint was nuanced, but mainly revolved around the themes and structure of the new season - that it lacked drama, interesting character dynamics, that the dialogue was artificial, stilted and sometimes absurd, and that the finale lacked punch. The kindest words suggested it was High Camp - so bad it was good, a romping mess. I beg to disagree.  This season was a complete dramatic work of Intertextual accomplishment - a very mature Tradition ...

This blog has often over the past ten years grappled with issues of evil, and today reminds us that the human being is capable of atrocities that no animal could imagine. Indeed, Greene 's famous dictum that evil is a failure of the imagination is clever but sadly false - as is the idea that a lack of empathy is to blame - indeed, the deepest forms of evil require both imagination and empathy, in order to be executed with fully diabolical impact.  You cannot prudently hurt a creature you do not understand, except by accident. 70 years ago, the war against Japan ended. We have been reminded that during that war, among other barbarisms, Japanese medical doctors performed vivisection for medical students on Allied prisoners of war.  Human Vivisection is the worst crime imaginable - it is surgically altering a living sentient being for experimental purposes. I cannot describe these wretched and utterly degrading surgeries here properly, but medical students were forced to watc...

Martin Penny was the first, and truest, friend, I made when I arrived in London, from Paris, in 2003. Ours was an unlikely and instantly achieved connection - he was the ironic, Atheist, very English, Chelsea-supporting Oxfam manager of wry wit, indifferent to poetry (but a keen reader and collector of prose) - and I, as you may know, was the Catholic-in-waiting sincere enthusiastic poet from Canada nursing bad injuries from a car accident  - but what we shared was a love of wordplay, conversation, pushing the boundaries of taste, and lunches over coffee at a local café (where we have had a meal together at least once a week for over ten years). TODD SWIFT AND MARTIN PENNY AT THE POETRY LIBRARY Martin is retiring, at the age 55, tomorrow, from being manager of the best bookshop in the Oxfam chain - at least for awhile - the Marylebone branch, recently poignantly downgraded to a clothing shop with some books in the back.  In its heyday, when I joined as poet-in-residence...

Very sad news.  Lee Harwood has died.  Harwood was an important British poet, whose work bridged over to American poetics and styles, especially those of the abstract lyricists of the New York School, perhaps. He was a gentle person, and his presence was lovely.  Had his work not fallen foul of certain critical tendencies in British poetry reception of the 60s-80s especially, which favoured a more well-made traditional poem, he would have surely been more widely enjoyed for what he truly was - one of the best, and most lyrically evocative  poets- sensuous of thought if minimal of touch - of his generation. As it was, those in the know loved his writing.

SHE'S A FAN The STYLISH Eyewear 20/20 Pamphlet series - edited by Les Robinson and designed by Edwin Smet - is now up to 16 poets - and we're launching 8 of the collections July 29th, at The Rugby Tavern, Bloomsbury, at 7-9pm, in a pub famous for being a watering hole for Plath and Hughes . Fans of great contemporary poetry by new, emerging, and established poets cannot but find something to enjoy - and since each poet will be reading for only 5 minutes, it will be a relatively quick and fun event (plus drinks, chance to get books signed, chat, and generally mingle). Here are the poets reading, IN NO ORDER, including a guest from Ireland, Julie Morrissy, whose work with Eyewear is out only later - she's a taste of things to come (I will be reading from Jack Little's pamphlet, he is back to Mexico now).... GEORGE SZIRTES JULIE MORRISSY KEITH JARRETT DAMILOLA ODELOLA SAMANTHA JACKSON SHELLEY ROCHE-JACQUES LEILANIE STEWART V.A. SOLA SMITH