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

SHE BETTER WIN. HER TASTE IN MUSIC IS BETTER. AND SHE IS NOT A MADMAN. Despite its awfulness in many ways, 2016 has yielded an extraordinary release of popular musical talent, in terms of new tracks; add to this the deaths of Bowie , Prince , and the win of the Nobel by Dylan , and it is a year the music was shaken. Eyewear wishes to advance the claim that, in fact, 2016 is the greatest musical year since 1996, if not 86. Consider the list below, and disagree with the statement IN THIS LIST YOU CAN SELECT 10 OF THE GREATEST MUSICAL ACTS SINCE 1966 FROM POP TO INDIE TO NEW WAVE TO ROCK TO R N B TO DANCE TO TOP 40. Ridiculously, each of these artists has made a fine work this year - either a song, or a collaboration or an album, or in the case of Beyoncé, a masterpiece of film and music, Lemonade . ABC ALICIA KEYS BARY GIBB BECK BEYONCE BOB DYLAN BON IVER BRITNEY SPEARS CHEAP TRICK DAVID BOWIE DRAKE FOY VANCE FRAN...

I AM NOT THE ONE YOU NEED Yesterday Bob Dylan won the Nobel Prize for Literature.  The award has been met with annual scorn and scepticism by many in the English press for decades, though the list of winners of the past 30 or so years includes Mahfouz, Fo, Brodsky, Lessing, Gordimer, Pamuk, Grass, Coetzee, Walcott, Heaney, Morrison, Munro, Pinter, Naipul, Modiano and Transtromer - all major figures in their genres. It is surely the case that Adonis, Roth, Murakami, Atwood, Ashbery, Muldoon , or Le Carre - to name just a few other world-famous writers now living - have an arguable case to be advanced, as well. Their time may yet come.   It cannot, however, be claimed that the Nobel ALWAYS misses the greats. In its odd career, it has managed to reward Yeats, T.S. Eliot, Faulkner, Hemingway, Milosz, Bellow, Neruda, Beckett, Steinbeck, Singer, Sartre, Camus, Pasternak, Gide, Hesse, Churchill, Mistral, Pirandello, Bergson, Shaw, O'Neill, Tagore, and Kipling . Any pr...

TRUMP IS PART OF A HISTORY OF WHITE MALE RAGE Like a crazed killer clown, whether we are thrilled, horrified, shocked, or angered (or all of these) by Donald Trump , we cannot claim to be rid of him just yet. He bestrides the world stage like a silverback gorilla (according to one British thug), or a bad analogy, but he is there, a figure, no longer of fun, but grave concern. There has long been a history of misogynistic behaviour in American gangster culture - one thinks of the grapefruit in the face in The Public Enemy , or Sinatra throwing a woman out of his hotel room and later commenting he didn't realise there was a pool below to break her fall, or the polluted womb in Pacino's Scarface ... and of course, some gangsta rap is also sexist.  American culture has a difficult way with handling the combined aspects of male power, and male privilege, that, especially in heteronormative capitalist enclaves, where money/pussy both become grabbable, reified objects and obj...

Eyewear will be announcing its various shortlists for the Hume, winner of the Sexton, and 50 participants in the 2017 anthology of best new Irish and British poetry, all in October.... And, we launch 5 new poetry collections at the world-famous Bloomsbury book shop, THE LONDON REVIEW OF BOOKS bookshop... Tuesday, 4 October, 7-9 pm, by these poets... BEN PARKER TERESE SVOBODA MARIA APICHELLA ALICE ANDERSON TONY CHAN and we have 4 poets reading at the SCOTTISH POETRY LIBRARY  on National Poetry Day at 6 pm, in Edinburgh, 6th October: GEORGE E CLARKE, POET LAUREATE OF CANADA MARION MCCREADY PAUL DEATON TERESE SVOBODA Then, our director will be reading soon after... more about that later....

Announcing the Shortlist for the 2016 Sexton Prize September 13, 2016  /  By Kelly Davio Eyewear Publishing is pleased to announce the shortlist for the 2016 Sexton Prize. The finalists are, in no particular order, as follows: THE BARBAROUS CENTURY, Leah Umansky HISTORY OF GONE, Lynn Schmeidler SEVERE CLEAR, Maya Catherine Popa GIMME THAT. DON’T SMITE ME, Steve Kronen SCHEHERAZADE AND OTHER REDEPLOYMENTS, David McAleavey AN AMERICAN PURGATORY, Rebecca Gayle Howell SIT IN THE DARK WITH ME, Jesse Lee Kercheval The shortlist was selected by Eyewear’s Director Todd Swift with Senior Editor Kelly Davio. Don Share of Poetry Magazine will select the winning manuscript, which will be released at the 2017 AWP conference in Washington, D.C. The winner will be announced in October.  Congratulations to our finalists! 

the book you must read "Baby Bad: TRUMP'S FINAL FACE IS THAT OF INFANTILISM" If we were to imagine history as a electrocardiogram measuring heart rate over time, the heart beat falling on 2016 along with Trump , ISIS and Brexit would measure as a major systolic thump, one that sent ripples through every avenue of public discussion and deeply tailored - and for the most part, hardened - our collective world-view. Reports by finance ministers, business leaders and civilians indicate a sense of gloom at best, crisis at worst. Taking the cardiac analogy further, Trump may represent a major arterial blood clot, a cystic fat narrowing our communal capillaries or (perhaps most aptly) a medically archaic form of angried blood, one that elevates the heart rate and sends it thumping through the 21st century with hysterical, irregular rhythm. And after Trump was officially inaugurated as the Republican nominee, his act went from merely irregular to officially unhinged....

THIS POET LOVES GOOD MUSIC 2016 has been more bad news than beach.... But in the midst of the worst times, popular culture, at least these past 100 years or so, in league with profit-oriented impulses, has managed to precision tool craft, emotion, structure, style, skill and pathos into a heady mix of song, dance, film, that has often seemed to surpass the moment, and ease some of the pangs and traumas.  No one in WW2, for instance, would begrudge the singers who gave the homes, bomb shelters and troop tents some measure of gladness in the dark. War is good for the entertainment business, as is economic struggle, and trouble in general.  The darker it gets, the better the songs. As if in keeping with that general idea, 2016 appears to be a masterclass in top flight popular music. Here are the 8 tracks - some top 40, others decidedly indie - that most got us dancing, toe tapping, or swooning, on the sunny sad and sifting days of this most challenging of recent...