Eyewear

Melita Hume Poetry Prize Shortlist: #5 DAVID SHOOK

2012-05-30T08:10:00.004+01:00

David Shook lives in Los Angeles, but grew up in Mexico City before studying linguistics in Oklahoma and poetry at Oxford. His poems and translations have appeared in magazines like Poetry, PN Review, and World Literature Today. Wasafiri nominated his poem “Mutt Ghazal” for the 2012 Forward Prize. His translations of Mario Bellatin’s Shiki Nagaoka: A Nose for Fiction and Victor Teran’s The Spines of Love will appear in late 2012. Shook is the Translator in Residence of the Poetry Parnassus, where he will premiere his poetry film Kilometer Zero, recorded secretly in Equatorial Guinea. He directs Phoneme Books.

David Shook, shortlisted for the MHPP 2012

Melita Hume Poetry Prize Shortlist: #4 V.A. SOLA SMITH

2012-05-29T22:42:00.003+01:00

V.A. Sola Smith, MHPP Shortlisted

V.A. Sola Smith was born in 1988, in Lancashire. She took a Contemporary Prose Fiction MA at Kingston University, graduating with Distinction in 2010.

June Torriano

2012-05-29T22:33:00.001+01:00

June 2012

3rd – Lucy Hamilton and Aviva Dautch – introduced by Mimi Khalvati

10th – John Hartley Williams and Chris Hamilton-Emery

17th – Jude Rosen and Stephen Watts

24th – Oliver Bernard

All readings start at 7.30pm - £5/£3 according to pocket

Address: 99 Torriano Avenue, Kentish Town, London NW5 2RX

Directions: From Kentish Town tube station walk up Leighton Road and turn left onto Torriano Avenue. Map

Phone: 0207 267 2751

Lung Jazz Finale at the V&A May 31!!!

2012-05-29T21:57:00.000+01:00

The LAST Selected Poems at the V&A Reading Rooms - Lung Jazz: Young British Poets for Oxfam

On Thursday 31st May at 7:30PM, the LAST Selected Poems at the V&A Reading Rooms will be celebrating thereaders of the new poetry anthology Lung Jazz: Young British Poets for Oxfam. It will be co-hosted, and feature a short reading, by the editor Todd Swift.

The full line-up is as follows:

Inua Ellams
Sandeep Parmar
James Byrne
Claire Trevien
Kathryn Maris
Jenna Butler&
Todd Swift

***How to attend***

Due to the limited capacity of the V&A Reading Rooms – RSVP’s need to be logged by emailing info.selectedpoems@gmail.com

1 place per RSVP – A reply will confirm that your name will be on the guest list upon arrival.

Melita Hume Poetry Prize Shortlist: #3 ALICE MILLER

2012-05-28T21:30:00.002+01:00

Alice Miller Shortlisted for The MHPP 2012

Alice Miller was born in Wellington, New Zealand in 1982. She earned an MA with Distinction from the International Institute of Modern Letters in New Zealand, and an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where she was a Glenn Schaeffer Fellow. Since 2008, she has received the Royal Society of New Zealand Manhire Prize, the Creative New Zealand Johnson Bursary, the Landfall Essay Prize, and the BNZ Katherine Mansfield Premier Award for short fiction. Most recently, she received a fellowship to write in Antarctica. Alice’s poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The Boston Review, The Wolf, The Iowa Review, Poetry Salzburg Review, and Best New Zealand Poems.

Lung Jazz Launched In Manchester May 30: Another Major Night of British Poets

2012-05-28T14:16:00.002+01:00

Northern Launch of Lung Jazz: Young British Poets for Oxfam

from Cinnamon/Eyewear

@ The Anthony Burgess Foundation

Engine House, Chorlton Mill, 3 Cambridge Street, Manchester, M1 5BY

May 30, 7 pm,

Readings by Paul Adrian, Jenna Butler, John Challis, John Clegg, Sarah Corbett, Michael Egan, Lindsey Holland, Evan Jones, Helen Mort, Kim Moore, Cath Nichols, Andrew Oldham, V.A. Sola Smith, Martha Sprackland, Claire Trevien, Ryan Van Winkle, Tom Weir and others tba

All welcome

Hosted by Todd Swift

Melita Hume Poetry Prize Shortlist: #2 JASON ENG HUN LEE

2012-05-28T10:59:00.004+01:00

Jason Eng Hun Lee, MHPP Shorlisted

Jason Eng Hun Lee was born in the UK in 1984. He is a co-ordinator of the OutLoud and Joyce is Not Here poetry groups in Hong Kong and has featured regularly in the Man Hong Kong International Literary Festival. He has published poems and reviews in the U.K., Singapore and Hong Kong, was nominated by Cha for a Pushcart Prize and his first collection was a finalist for the inaugural HKU Poetry Prize in 2010. He has an English MA from Leeds and is due to complete a doctoral thesis at The University of Hong Kong on contemporary twenty-first century literature.

Melita Hume Poetry Prize Shortlist: #1 COLETTE SENSIER

2012-05-27T12:53:00.000+01:00

Colette Sensier was born in Brighton in 1988. She studied English at King’s College, Cambridge, and now writes and lives in London after stints in Crete and Bulgaria. While at school she won the Foyle’s, Peterloo and Tower Poetry prizes. She has been featured in Oxfam’s Asking a Shadow to Dance, Salt Press’ Best British Poetry 2011 and Salt Book of Younger Poets and Lung Jazz: Young British Poets for Oxfam, as well as various magazines, and writes regularly for Poetry News magazine. She is currently working on her first novel, and poetry, with the help of Spread the Word’s Flight mentorship scheme, while working as a copywriter for a small charity.

Colette Sensier, Shortlisted for The Melita Hume Poetry Prize 2012

The Shortlist For The Melita Hume Poetry Prize Starts Today

2012-05-27T12:49:00.001+01:00

Eyewear Publishing has received numerous submissions from across the world - from China, Africa, Australia/ New Zealand, North America, Ireland, the UK, Europe and South America - from poets born in 1980 or since, whose first full collection this would be. Submission was free. The "sifter" is Todd Swift and Tim Dooley will judge the final shortlist, which cannot be more than 12 poetry collections. The winner will be announced in August, and their collection will be published by Eyewear Publishing no later than in 2013; they will also receive a thousand pound prize. The quality of the work has been eye-opening, and has made the compilation of even such a large shortlist challenging. As part of the excitement of the run-up to the Jubilee holiday, Eyewear will begin announcing each winner on a semi-regular basis over the next fortnight, as if leaked by a papal butler.

Bowden On Best Coast

2012-05-26T11:38:00.000+01:00

Lydia Bowden, Eyewear's current music critic, checks out the second Best Coast album

Summer: beer in hand and a small group of friends with Best Coast’s brand new album The Only Place playing in the background- it’s where it belongs.

Having been influenced by The Beach Boys, duo Bobb Bruno and Bethany Cosentino had something to build upon, and you sure can hear this in their second album. However this better produced set of songs wasn’t what the band had originally been going for. Their debut ‘Crazy for You’ has a much –how can I put this? - Dirtier, feel to it, with less of that sharp, nipped and tucked sound you hear in ‘The Only Place’.

This was all with the help of producer Jon Brion, who has worked with some big names like Keane and Kanye West- to name a few. With his help, Best Coast were sure to create such a great album.

With their clever play on words in the title, its obvious the duo love all things West Coast- I’ll let you work that one out- and you can hear it in the music, especially the title song which starts out with a light, but head-bobbing guitar strum, and as I found, it’s quite hard to stop throughout the song. “We were born with sun in our teeth and in our hair” the opening line totally sums up their life in California, and it’s almost them introducing themselves to the listener in their own little way.

Lydia Bowden, Eyewear staffer

Other songs like ‘Mean Girls’ and ‘Let’s Go Home’ also have a slight Californian- chilled kick to them, but taking a look at all the others, it seems life perhaps is not all that dandy in the West Coast. ‘Why I Cry’ and ‘How They Want Me to Be’ make me sad; to put it bluntly and they’ll make you sad if you listen to them enough, just read the titles.

Saying that, you still need this album on your summer play list. And hey, even if there are a few sad songs, you’ve still got your beer and your friends, so what possibly could go wrong?

Ten Best Tracks For A Hot Day

2012-05-25T10:06:00.001+01:00

Eyewear loves music, as you probably know, and loves a good list. Given the London BBQ moment, here are ten songs - arguably the greatest in the rock/pop canon - that go with hot times. I should add that I am of the opinion that rock/pop has two key themes: sex and love. Here then 10 recommended blistering summer songs, G & T optional:

1. '99.9 F' - Suzanne Vega
2. 'Mesopotamia' - The B-52's
3. 'Sex On Fire' - Kings Of Leon
4. 'Blister In The Sun' - Violent Femmes
5. 'Summer of 69' - Bryan Adams
6. 'Summer's Cauldron' - XTC
7. 'Whole Lotta Love' - Led Zep
8. 'Real Cool Time' - The Stooges
9. 'L.A. Woman' - The Doors
10. 'Sister Havana' - Urge Overkill

Too Darn Hot

2012-05-25T09:50:00.001+01:00

Heard It On The Grapevine

London has two settings: rubbish weather and Tropical. Either it is rainy, gloomy and muddle-through intermittent sunny, or it is blazingly humid - which it is now. We are in the throes of 28 degree weather+. This is wonderful, but also, given the Sargasso that is the Tube, semi-deadly. It's been a good time to watch The Rum Diary, a sultry, oddball film that is a strangely moving portrait of three SNAFU'd writer buddies in 1960 Puerto Rico, written by Hunter S., and produced by J. Depp. It has a brilliant character actor turn from Michael Rispoli, who should play Bob Holman in a biopic. The film also features a splendid Amber Heard, who is as fine a starlet as one could wish for, in London or the Bahamas. Readers of Eyewear from Day One will know that when we kicked off in 2005, the subject was about weather, too.

Battersea Press Release: A New Source of Poetic Energy

2012-05-23T09:15:00.004+01:00

Press release: The Battersea Review: for immediate release

The staff:

Publisher and Managing Editor: Umit Singh Dhuga
Contributing Editors: Ben Mazer, Philip Nikolayev, Todd Swift (UK), Jeet Thayil (India)
Art Director: Drew Vanderveen

Editorial Offices: USA

Editorial and Business Contact: email Umit Singh Dhuga at usd2001@caa.columbia.edu

The magazine will appear quarterly, in both online and print formats. The first issue will debut on the Battersea Review website, http://thebatterseareview.com/ ; on June 1. The print version of Vol. 1, No. 1 will appear in September.

Submissions are rolling, i.e. read continuously, as we are a quarterly.
Exceptional criticism or prose is especially desired.

There are two versions of the cover floating around facebook. The one that includes Todd Swift's name (the one that appears most recently on my own wall) is the most recent one, but three names are yet to be added to the cover: Greg Delanty, Anna Razumnaya, David Meltzer.

Contributors include: Ben Mazer (the entirety of 'The King'), Philip Nikolayev ('Juvenilia'), Stephen Sturgeon, Gerard Malanga, Todd Swift, Katia Kapovich, Jeet Thayil, John Hennessy, Stephen Burt, Joe Green, Robert Archambeau, Greg Delanty, David Meltzer, Ailbhe Darcy, Kathleen Rooney, Ernest Hilbert, Matthew Silverman, Mark Schorr, Unpublished Weldon Kees, edited and introduced by James Reidel, Nora Delaney on Archie Burnett's Philip Larkin, Mario Murgia on translating Ariosto, and Anna Razumnaya on the interrogation of Mandelstam and 'The Stalin Epigram'.

Editorial Policy: The Battersea Review seeks especially gifted poets and people who can write first rate critical essays. We may at times be looking for critical essays on particular topics or written in a diversity of modes. 1940s poetry or poets could be a topic of particular interest. Any really brilliant essay analysing first rate poetry to a greater degree of precision and complexity and definition than one would ordinarily find in a contemporary literary essay would be highly suitable to our pages. We are hoping for a revival of first rate criticism, and that Empson for example would be familiar reading to the serious critic. We want aesthetic criticism, and we want philosophical criticism. Historical criticism is also of interest. We also want material from the past, biographical essays that are original and cover uncharted territory, works in various forms such as letters or interviews or transcriptions, first rate verse drama, essays about first rate contemporary poets, and of course exceptional poetry. Brilliant hairbrained schemes are always acceptable. Oh, and topics of especial interest are (in no particular order) Keith Douglas, Henry Reed, poets of the 1940s, Donald Davie, Empson, Richards, A. S. Eddington, the Order of the Golden Dawn, Yeats, Beckett, T. S. Eliot, Hart Crane, Robert Lowell, Robert Graves, Dylan Thomas, aesthetics, classical poetry, Indian poetry, Scottish and Welsh poetry, British cinema of the 1940s, the BBC radio, The Criterion, Encounter, poetry of earlier periods, essays about distribution and communication in the modern period, essays about distribution and communication in the cold war period, royalty, the Anglican church, Rome, and espionage. This is not a complete list, but only meant to be suggestive. We are not looking for prose that is blatantly academic, except where it suits some dignified purpose.

Paul Buchanan's 'Mid Air'

2012-05-21T09:43:00.004+01:00

My god, this is beautiful. I never really knew The Blue Nile, was never a fan, but Paul Buchanan's new album has as its title track this extraordinarily delicate love song that makes most lyric poetry seem stentorian.

F Is For Forgery: Jon Stone's Debut Reviewed By Eyewear

2012-05-17T18:28:00.000+01:00

It is an apt time for Don Paterson's Selected Poems to come out from Faber (mine is in the post) - because it cements his status as the next poet down the rung from Paul Muldoon, in terms of British/Irish poets of ludic excellence, working in the less-avant garde part of the field. And now here comes Jon Stone, whose School of Forgery is the Poetry Book Society Recommendation currently. I spoke with Stone last night, at the same time as Owen Sheers, and it was a pleasure to be in the company of two major if opposed English stylists, who both dress well. Stone, in person, is slight, slim, dapper, and very pleasant. He has the manners of a modest dandy. His poetry is entirely predicated on the artifice, puzzling, and pop culture nous that one associates with Muldoon, Paterson, and, perhaps, Roddy Lumsden, but also, differently, is more directly influenced by Japanese culture.

No British stylist since Wilde has so openly celebrated their Japonisme. I would say that lurking behind all this facaderie is F For Fake, the great Welles film, which Stone may have seen or simply inhaled; I feel kinship to this poetry (and not just because he seems to reference an early Alistair MacLean poem of mine) as I too love the twins Oscar/Orson who together reforged what the media's mutating mask and mirror means. And Jon Stone has as many Os as Orson too! Oh.

Of course, Stone also pays lip service to Oulipean ideas of constraint, and Lumsden/Chivers new formalism/hybridity, via Keston Sutherland via Charles Bersntein via Christian Bok (umlaut optional). This book of his, from Salt, is exciting in the way that the new Kennard may be, and we hope the Berry Faber will be - that is, it is not just good for a young poet good, but good in the way that (once) Why Brownlee Left or Quoof was good - it raised the bar, it threw down a new guantlet, it - choose your trope. Eyewear has long believed that there is a generational shift in the UK that begins, more or less, in 1963 or '65. That catches Paul Farley, Daljit Nagra, Oswald, Paterson, etc... basically, meaning, poets born less than 50 years ago are new and different, intriguingly so. Family resemblances are one thing, but slice this generation off at 1970, and you really begin to see a whole new world of wonder. But, to really break off into what the YBPs are about, think of 1980 as your new borderline. We're talking about poets just around 30.

Stone was born in 1983. Berry in 1981. The Berry Stone generation (one could add Ahren Warner and dozens of others here, see Lung Jazz, etc., but this will do for now) is very much its own kind of thing. And it is bracing and fun and lovely to really sense and see this shift happening, as we live and breathe. Now back to Stone's debut. It is brilliant, in ways that most UK books of poetry haven't been, ever, really. The density of clever wordplay in 'Mimic Octopus' is Muldoon/Paterson, but the tone is stranger, more tense, odder: "now black as the bunraku puppeteer". Muldoon never let you forget he was from Moy. Paterson is laddish enough to remind you of the football scores. Stone speaks knowingly of manga and Musami Rikko. Of course, Stone is belated - China is the future, Japan a decadent past, and manga is very 90s. I used to write poems about geisha and Sailor Moon was anime I story-edited when Stone was 11.

But the sincerity of affectation, the aesthetic sentimentality, of these poems, is a new beast. There is skill, craft, technique here, and off the shelf pop references, but also a step-change level of intricate game-playing. For want of a better word, this really is dandyish. It's European stuff. Rich, thick, arty, revelling in the accessible opacity, the frostwork jouissance. Nothing wrong then, but the avant-garde isn't usually this rewarding. And Stone has the linguistic panache to pull it off. Anyone can claim to be a magpie decadent avant la lettre. Stone does it. And does it fearlessly. School of Forgery fakes its own up-to-date poetic mastery so well, it manages to become what it merely gestures at: a state-of-the-art masterpiece. English poetry was perhaps last this differently, oddly smart with Christopher Reid's Katerina Brac. Is Bric-a-brac back? For now, we must turn on to a new Stone, over and out.

Blurb Mania!

2012-05-17T10:33:00.000+01:00

This blurb from Amazon for a forthcoming book deserves our attention... looking forward to seeing the finished product....

"Dear World & Everyone In It is a ground-breaking new poetry anthology presenting the work of over 60 of the most talented and interesting young poets currently writing in the UK. Chosen by one of the country's leading young poetry editors, inspired by American precedents, and growing out of The Rialto's recent series of young poets features curated by Nathan Hamilton, it is the first British anthology to attempt to define a generation through a properly representative cross-section of work and a fully collaborative editorial process. By drawing on the poets' own recommendations, this anthology represents more effectively and appropriately a new generational mood - hybrid, playful, collaborative, ambitious, inclusive, cooperative. Less top down, more bottom up, it speaks also of other movements in our world, and even ends up challenging parochial notions of Britishness by including overseas poets who live or work here and who have become engaged and influential in the scene. Avoiding older, oppositional attitudes, Nathan Hamilton introduces his anthology with an essay describing 'this new generation's hybridisation of two aptly ironic and business-sounding "strains" in UK poetics - taxonomised as "product" and "process"'. His lively analysis juxtaposes modernist approaches with those exploring more traditional modes, hoping to bring some of the pleasures of the former to a wider audience. Dear World & Everyone In It is an indispensable summary or starting map for anyone wanting to explore and enjoy more of the current UK poetry landscape or seeking to better understand what's going on out there. The poets include Rachael Allen, Richard Barrett, Emily Berry, Theo Best, Siddhartha Bose, Elizabeth-Jane Burnett, Tim Cockburn, Emily Critchley, Patrick Coyle, Amy De'Ath, S.J. Fowler, Jim Goar, Matthew Gregory, Colin Herd, Ishion Hutchinson, Katharine Kilalea, Luke Kennard, Agnes Lehoczky, Chris McCabe, Toby Martinez de las Rivas, Marianne Morris, Richard Parker, Heather Phillipson, Sam Riviere, Hannah Silva, Marcus Slease, Linus Slug (Mendoza), Josh Stanley, Keston Sutherland, Jonty Tiplady, Jack Underwood, Joe Walton, Ahren Warner, Tom Warner, James Wilkes, Steve Willey, and many others still to be confirmed."

New Poem by Umit Singh Dhuga

2012-05-15T20:59:00.001+01:00

Childs Hill

Six months later out of the womb for eight

hours and you're gone. I'm sorry I was late

at Gatwick but I couldn't hit eject

... (our Starman days, they're gone, correct?)

and stop the jet's petrol-blasting taxi

nor advance in the queue for a taxi

with sincere words—"Please, my nephew is dead".

They don't believe me; after all, they've just read

in flight about who fucked who and whether

Rooney's bicycle kick came off his shin

or "he done laced it!" This isn't London

any more but a mobile with a tether

to every other sputtering machine. . .

The casket was painfully light at Golders Green.

London, May 2012

poem by Umit Singh Dhuga, Classics scholar with a PhD from Columbia. He is the founder, publisher, and managing editor of The Battersea Review. Ben Mazer is co-editor.

New Poem by Ben Mazer

2012-05-15T09:51:00.003+01:00

Upon Waking with an Editorial Hangover
Some think that meter's had its bloody turn,
and that it should be buried in Keats' urn.
They feel that the experiments of Shelley
do nothing to assault the nerves to jelly.
They'd gladly give up struggling through Lord Byron,
prefer by far the simple prose of Styron.
Milton stops their blood and turns it cold,
while Wordsworth on his mountaintops seems old.
Even when it's roughened as in Ransom,
it is the New York Times that sets them dancin'.
While there are those who read the avant-garde,
excited that its formlessness is hard
for nearly everyone to understand;
like hungry wolves they travel in a band
and howl with vital passion at the moon,
finding in chaos beauty and a tune.
While I am neither for it or against it,
and call on language only as I've sensed it.
It seems I take my language as I find it;
mine is the more progressive form of blinded.
I am reborn -- unmetered -- lacking form;
I'll find my inspiration in a storm.

poem by Ben Mazer

Avengers Assemble (The Avengers) Film Classic

2012-05-12T16:00:00.001+01:00

It is clear that writer-director Joss Whedon knew he was making an American film classic when he wrote The Avengers (2012), if only because Captain America recognises the reference to The Wizard of Oz, on which it is partly based. Then again, Whedon's brilliant film mind has assembled a half-dozen other canonical film templates, including Citizen Kane, the Magnificent Seven, and Hidden Fortress/Star Wars. The assembling of the reluctant heroes to save a beleaguered community (New York/Earth) is pure Western; the screwball comedy of the eccentric playboy millionaire is all Kane before the downfall; and Nick Fury is Dorothy, trying to make heroes of his motley crew - or is Natasha Dorothy, lost in a world of monsters and magic, seeking a redemptive home?

But this is mainly comedy as art. Indeed, there is as much Bringing Up Baby here as there is The Wrath of Khan. What has to be said is that Whedon has written and directed the most intelligent, dramatic, and purely entertaining family action film since he worked on Toy Story - but probably the best since Indiana Jones outran the big boulder. I actually thing The Avengers is an instant great film. The pure cinema moments of hilarity (normally caused by The Hulk), balanced by Shakespearean issues relating to kings, family, and the gods, derive partly from Stan Lee and the Marvel mythos, but are here enhanced in a way that other film versions of Marvel comics have not achieved. The attention to the NYC cops, and the citizens on the ground in peril, is very touching. The best lines belong, oddly, to Captain America, whose Christian virtue plays well off of Stark's Casablanca go-it-aloneness. Of course, as with Rick, Stark chooses sacrifice over the woman (Pepper). That this film holds up to these greats is what this post is about. See this one on the big screen.

100 Best Living British Poets: #33 PENELOPE SHUTTLE

2012-05-12T14:03:00.000+01:00

Penelope Shuttle #33

Whatever Sends The Music Into Time

2012-05-11T10:02:00.005+01:00

Todd Swift on Leah Fritz's New & Selected Poems from Salmon

There are a number of Americans who have come to London over the past 100 or so years, and made an impact - one thinks of Robert Frost, Eliot, Pound, and then later, Donaghy. Today, there are a good dozen excellent American expat poets who mainly publish in the UK, and are better known, sometimes, here than "back home" - Liane Strauss, Kathryn Maris, Tamar Yoseloff, Katy Evans Bush, Ruth Fainlight, and Leah Fritz, come to mind.

Fritz is a very interesting instance of this expatriation. Before she moved to London in the mid-80s, in her 50s, she had been a very vocal and visible member of the feminist movement in America, based for a time in New York, writing articles and books in the 60s and 70s. For instance, Andrea Dworkin's great work, Intercourse, is dedicated to Fritz. Fritz's archives are at Duke University. When she settled near Sylvia Plath's final flat, in Primrose Hill (purely by accident), she began to discover her true vocation was poetry. What followed were several decades of writing poetry, and being a very welcome and benevolent presence on the London poetry scene.

Fritz's poems, gathered here in a handsome edition by Irish press Salmon Publishing with a striking cover image by the poet's artist husband, Howard Fritz, have had a frustrating reception history. While several of her best poems have, over the past 25 years, appeared in PN Review, Poetry Review, Acumen and Ambit, her collections were with small presses, including the particularly odd Bluechrome, whose publisher seems to have literally disappeared. It has struck me as eccentric or a little unfortunate for such an excellent poet to be marginalised with small Bristol-based presses - but that is how the British poetry world often works. It is rare for American and Canadian poets of even the first-rank to be published by established larger presses in the UK, even if they live here (Salt and Seren have somewhat altered that story of late); nor was she published much in America during this time.

That lack of always-fortunate mainstream publication has now changed with this superb overview of her poetry oeuvre, which has come at a key moment in her late career, at the moment she is writing her best work. Fritz, who is in her early 80s now, has, perhaps without many people realising it, become a poet of minor greatness. That is, while no claim for her being a major American poet of our time would be fully credible, it is hard to read these 160-odd pages of poetry and not feel a thrill of recognition: Fritz has become a brilliant minor poet of the first rank, one that all American poets and critics (at least) need to include in their thinking.

What Fritz does best is thinking aloud, in poems that are often musical and usually formal. It is as if The New York School had fused with The Movement. These are poems of the city, of art, of desire, of remembrance, of atheism, of fear of death - and also, politics. And also, it must be said, reflections on the act of being a poet. There is a verve and tang to the diction which is American, but the shaping lyric intelligence owes far more to a British sensibility. Many of the poems are satirical, but enough are lyrical, and compassionate, to surprise the reader. An excellent example of her stylish brio can be found in a new poem from the selection, 'Conundrum', reprinted in full below:

Often I veer from wanting to be good
to doing what is right, and back again.
They're not the same. To open up the flood-
gates of my heart may simply drown my brain;
to stem that tide with reason, just restrain
a passion that has instinct on its side.

And what accounting must I make for pride?
To attract new friends and keep the old, to please
my love beyond the argument of skin,
must I consider each antipathy,
concur with every shibboleth? How thin
is such affection! What's then left of me?
But, truly, would I ever surrender love
when there's no other cause I'm certain of?

This poem is a fine instance of the Fritz mode: elegant, rhetorical, discursive, and formally poised - it's also smart, and infused with a sense of the irony of poetic tension. Fritz, indeed, yokes together many unusual tendencies into one poetic imagination - atheist and seeker of social justice, lover of old movies, and modern art, formalist, and radical - her reading of contemporary English poets, especially, has raised her game, to the point where perhaps ten or more of the poems collected here in Whatever Sends The Music Into Time, including the title poem, might be possible classics of a kind, the sort that would not look out of place in the next Norton anthology. It is certainly hard to imagine a more intelligent, committed and witty American poet now writing in her 80s. I would like to end with the opening poem in the book, which I think is very subtle and moving in its enjambments and mirroring, and its sly references to Crane and Yeats, titled 'Where Were You':

Where were you when I needed you, the year
the old man died, the year I got the plague
of womanhood, the year the sailor jumped
me in the park, the year I started out
to think of love, hugging my schoolbooks to
my breast? You weren't one of those who hung
out on the corner of my eye, who stood
apart and held me when the old man died.

And when I started out to think of love
and caught the plague of womanhood, where were
you when the sailor jumped me in the park?
Where were you when the boy who looked so like
you stood apart and held me quietly
the day the old man died, that fourteenth spring
when everything changed, everything?

Fritz combines poetic craft with craftiness, and is a poet all readers who enjoy subtle poetic ratiocination and feistiness combined (a rare marvel that) should seek out.

Music Review: Bowden On The Civil Wars and Van Etten

2012-05-11T09:19:00.000+01:00

Ms. Bowden likes music

Lydia Bowden, guest music critic for Eyewear, weighs in on two recent albums

An inspiring mixture of country/folk, The Civil Wars is made up of a duo featuring John Paul White and Joy Williams. Their album Barton Hollow at first listen is made up of a lonesome guitar and perfect melodies, both contributing to a rather haunting sound, but listen to the whole album, and you’ll hear something totally unforgettable.

If I was asked to choose a song that both makes me cry and feel an ounce of hope, ‘Poison and Wine’ is my first choice. The heartbreaking tone to their voices makes you really feel what they are singing about, you can literally hear the pain experienced in their husky, yet, mournful voices. The song is backed by a simple guitar melody, with the line, ‘Oh I don’t love you but I always will’ sung over and over which is clearly a contradiction, but it hits you in all the right places. The entire album is a soundtrack to life, love and loss and very much so; heartbreak. Other favourites include, the title song ‘Barton Hollow’, which has a kick to it; a bit of attitude, which levels out the album as a whole and ‘My Father’s Father’, which has the sweetest beat of a subtle hit on the side of an acoustic guitar; this would be enchanting to listen to at a live gig and I intend on grabbing a ticket ASAP. Finally, ‘The Violet Hour’, that brings together the soothing notes of a piano and a guitar; the collaboration of the two instruments can only be described as something magical; movie worthy, and what’s more there’s no vocal, which adds to the sorrowful quality of the song.

Having won two Grammys already, the duo are set to be a huge hit. Having released the album in the US last year, it has finally made its way over the pond and onto every indie folk’s speakers. If you’re not into country music, this is something with a pleasant twist. I’d call them a slightly more cheerful The xx with less of that beat, so if you’re a fan of them, just give it a quick listen. I promise, you won’t be disappointed.

Now, a dark and slightly twisted sound comes from Sharon van Etten’s Tramps. Full of confessions and personal opinions on love and loss and on the same page in subjects to that of The Civil Wars, Etten has slowly appeared from nowhere with this diamond of an album.

Having released her first records, Because I Was In Love followed by Epic, Etten was noticed by the wonderful Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon. Since then, she has created this album and written every last word herself. Each song is one element of a rainbow of emotions, from honesty to spitefulness and back again, it’s as if Etten has opened up her mind for all to hear. A talented writer and more, it is effectively poetry written down on a page. The most talked about track, ‘Give Out’ highlights her situation in love, she says, ‘You’re the reason why I’ll move to the city or/ Why I’ll need to leave’ and with a constant rhythm of a broken-hearted acoustic guitar, you feel her bruised opinion on relationships and much more that have obviously come from personal experience- and that is what is so great about this album; it’s integrity. Etten is supported by backing vocalist, Heather Woods throughout the album, and without her crucial contribution, it wouldn’t give it that desperate, women-in-love implication. ‘Serpents’ has this incredible revengeful feeling to it, and the electric guitar that gradually gets louder towards the chorus sounds like it’s full of fury, and it has the right to be, from the line, ‘You enjoy sucking on dreams, so I will fall asleep with someone other than you’ it has an obvious intention to inject this into the listener. From this, to the other end of the scale, there’s ‘Kevin’s’, which is much softer in the acoustic and gloomy vocals, but nevertheless still makes it’s point to an ex lover, just as much as the other songs do.

I couldn’t possibly criticise this album, but if anything, I would advise not to listen to it after a break-up. Etten’s brutally honest lyrics will hit you right in the heart and you’ll be left in a snivelling mess- and just the same with The Civil Wars, both possess the ability to take all your emotions, crush them in their palms and throw them at the wall. Katy Perry, next?

Lydia Bowden studies Creative Writing with English Literature at Kingston University.

No More Anonymous

2012-05-10T11:29:00.004+01:00

Eyewear is tired of the sad and vindictive people out there in the blogosphere who think it makes sense to bravely stand up for themselves, anonymously, and insult me for taking a public stand. The chief problem with the world of poetry (all worlds?) is transparency - there isn't enough of it. I stand by my (admittedly evolving, like Obama) views. Nor do the contributors to this blog ever need to share these views. I find it pitiful to be receiving very personal, nasty attacks, often daily. I am a liberal Catholic capitalist - get over it. I could pretend otherwise, but as the owner of a small business who regularly attends Mass, but is open to freedom of speech and votes for the Lib Dems - none of which ashames me - it would be madness to claim otherwise. None of these views is without fault - show me which ideology, or belief, is flawless. However, if I prefer not to roar approval of a victory for socialism in Greece and France which threatens the Merkel consensus for Europe, so be it. I hope I am proved wrong. But we are in debt, folks - badly in debt. Borrowing much more is not, to my mind, fiscally wise - but then again I am a fiscal conservative. Anyway, all this to say - I have blocked anonymous comments from this blog for now. Dare to name yourself, if you wish to make a point.

May 16 in Bloomsbury: A Major Night for Young British Poets!

2012-05-09T15:51:00.003+01:00

A message from Martin Penny, of Oxfam:

We would be pleased if you could join us on Wednesday May 16th 7-10 pm, for a celebration of the launch of Lung Jazz, an anthology of young British poets, from Cinnamon and Eyewear presses. All proceeds from the sales go directly to Oxfam. Admission is free and refreshments will be provided.

The Lung Jazz Celebration will be at Goodenough College, London, in Bloomsbury, The Churchill Room.

Some of Britain's best young poets reading one poem each in support of the anthology:

FIRST HALF 7 PM
Agnieszka Studzinska
Alex Macdonald
Alice Willington
Alistair Noon
Anna Johnson
Ben Parker
Chris Mccabe
Todd Von Joel
Declan Ryan
Eileen Pun
Emily Berry
Evan Jones
Helen Mort
Holly Hopkins
Jacob Sam-La Rose

INTERVAL

SECOND HALF 8.30 PM
James Byrne
Jane Yeh
Jon Stone
Kate Potts
Kathryn Simmonds
Laura Bottomley
Lorraine Mariner
Liz Berry
Neil Gregory
Richard Lambert
Sandeep Parmar
Siddhartha Bose
Stefan Mohamed
Tiffany A. Tondut
Clare Pollard

Location:

London House
Goodenough College
Mecklenburgh Square
Bloomsbury
London, WC1N 2AB

For map see: http://www.londonhouse.org.uk/location/

Big May 14 Music Day!

2012-05-09T14:34:00.002+01:00

Lovers of indie pop rejoice, Monday May 14 2012 is a bumper crop day. Consider that 9 new albums worth owning, from Beach House, Gossip, Garbage, Best Coast, Mothlite, Niki & The Dove, Ren Harvieu, Simian Mobile Disco and Zulu Winter, arrive on these UK shores then, and it frankly boggles the ear-drums. Can't wait. Thank god for Spotify.