Merry Christmas To All

I would like to offer a very special Christmas poem to all my readers this year. It was written Christmas, 2005, which was the last I would spend with my father. We spent Christmas in Richmond, Quebec, at my grandparents' home, across the river from Melbourne. An Eastern Townships Christmas is about as idyllic as one can get. Snow is half-a-man deep, and the fir tree boughs are laden with it. Days we'd ski or walk in the woods, nights sit by a roaring fire, and read Robert Frost. This poem is set in this territory, which is where my mother grew up. I've found a most appropriate image, a painting set within a mile or less of where it was written (though a hundred years before) by Frederick Simpson Coburn, the painter and illustrator who was born in Melbourne, Quebec, before moving to study in Berlin and Paris. Curiously enough, he became an illustrator for some of the stories of Edgar Poe, in New York in the early 1900s, which perhaps also ties in with the slightly macabre tone of this work. Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night.

The Last Blizzard

My mother showed me
the house she had lived in
fifty years ago

when she had been a girl
who threw glass
at her enemies

with a pig named Margaret.
My father kept his eyes
on the deteriorating conditions

ahead, saying: soon we won’t see
a thing in front of us.
For now, we could.

The town my mother
no longer lived in
had big wood homes

with long, wide porches.
Fir trees stood nearby.
Christmas lights. At the end

of her street the river was met
by a green bridge.
As we crossed we saw icy water.

My mother pointed out
a view that had once been
on the two-dollar bill, before

counterfeiters forced them
to use a more intricate design.
She showed me her school,

where she had walked and run
and where she moved to later on.
So what if the weather made us slow?

We stopped to watch
a white deer standing
in a white field, not moving.


poem by Todd Swift

kari edwards

Eyewear has just learned that kari edwards has died suddenly this December.

Terrible sad news.

http://ronsilliman.blogspot.com/2006/12/kari-edwards-died-of-heart-failure-on.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kari_edwards

The Swift Report 2006

Each year I write a report to my friends, summing up the year that has been, and looking forward to the next. 2006 was the saddest year of my life, although in some other, lesser ways a good and important one. Three close family members as well as four friends died this year. Most significantly, my wonderful father, Thomas Edward Swift, died of brain cancer, on September 9, at the age of 66. I had spent weeks with him in hospital in Montreal. It has been a very difficult time, and I miss him so much (he is pictured here). His memorial service was very moving, and many friends and colleagues of his (and mine) attended, to celebrate the kind and exceptionally generous man he was. I am quite concerned for my mother, for the other two relations who died this year were her father and brother (my grand-father and uncle Ian and Edward Hume). As well, my good friend, the poet Rob Allen, died of cancer, start of November.


*

In 2006 I turned 40. In the spring, I moved to Maida Vale with my wife. My father was very proud to know that I had begun my PhD in Creative and Critical Writing at the University of East Anglia (UEA), and that poems of mine appeared in some very good journals and papers, such as New American Writing, Poetry Review and The Guardian. Other poems of mine were this year published in Iota and The Cimarron Review. I have accepted poems forthcoming in Acumen, Chapman, The Manhattan Review and Vallum. I continue to be a Core Tutor for The Poetry School. I also began lecturing on the MA in creative writing course at Kingston University. This year I also published reviews in Books in Canada, The Globe and Mail and Poetry Review. My father was also very proud of the Oxfam CD I edited this year, Life Lines, and launched in summer 2006, featuring over sixty major UK poets, including the poet laureate Andrew Motion, Wendy Cope, Simon Armitage, David Harsent, Anne-Marie Fyfe, Al Alvarez, Dannie Abse and Fleur Adcock. It has so far sold over 5,000 copies. I also edited an e-book anthology with funds to the Red Cross, Babylon Burning, for nth position, to note the 5th anniversary of 9/11. At the end of 2006, my-coeditor Jason Camlot and I turned in our manuscript to our publisher Vehicule Press, for Language Acts, the major new study of Anglo-Quebec poetry, the first of its kind in 40 years, to be launched spring 2007. In the autumn, a good-looking pamphlet of new poems of mine, Natural Curve, was issued by the small Alberta press, Rubicon.

*

Things I look forward to next year: working on my manuscript for the Carcanet Book of 20th Century Canadian Verse, which I am editing. Doing further research for my PhD. Maybe doing some more teaching at university level. Doing poetry readings, as both host and reader. Writing some more reviews. Launching Language Acts in Quebec. And most of all seeing my mother and brother and his wife again, back home.

*

One thing. I have yet to finalize news of the publication of my fourth collection of poetry. Hopefully, early in 2007, I will be able to do so.

*

In the most difficult times, kindness, even gentleness, can make the smallest difference seem a vast improvement. Hope, even faith, is also a welcome traveller to bring along. I wish you God, or at least grace. And as much light and peace as can be found in this dark world. Be well in the new year.

Dear Santa,

I know you are very busy this year bringing all kinds of electronic games to all the good boys and girls of the rich world, but if you have any time, could you send a red-nosed reindeer to help the International Red Cross in their campaign to ban cluster bombs. Those toys only hurt people don't they? Lots of people ask for peace, but from what I have seen, peace can't happen yet. So all I want this year is a few small things. Next year I'll ask you for a miracle,

sincerely,

Todd

http://www.icrc.org/eng

http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2006/11/06/europe/EU_GEN_Red_Cross_Cluster_Bombs.php

Tis The Season To Buy My Poetry Pamphlet

Crimbo is here. That's Christmas to those not currently based in the United Kingdom. Christmas is a time for giving and, especially, for ordering that hard-to-get rare (yet still in stock) poetry pamphlet. Say, Natural Curve.

Order while supplies last! And support a poet.

http://www.rubiconpress.org/chapbooks.htm

No Time To Lose

The Winter 2006/07 issue (volume 96:4) of Poetry Review, edited by poet Fiona Sampson, is now out, with the theme "A la recherche".

North American (and other non-UK) readers wishing to follow the contemporary poetry world as it unfolds on these isles should subscribe to PR - it is, to paraphrase Ms. Turner, simply the best.

That being said, I am honoured to have a review published in this issue, on the new collection by Paul Farley, Tramp in Flames. Other contributors include Michael Longley (specially featured), Eavan Boland, John Fuller, Ruth Padel, Alan Brownjohn, Jackie Kay, Glyn Maxwell, Jay Parini, Patrick Crotty and Frank Dullaghan.

Order from www.poetrysociety.org.uk

Poem by Joe Dunthorne

Eyewear is very glad to welcome rising literary star Joe Dunthorne (pictured) to these pages, especially as the holiday season approaches, for now is a good time to be festive and celebrate this exciting writer's work.

Dunthorne, who graduated from the Creative Writing MA at the University of East Anglia the same year as me, is both a fine prose writer and poet. At UEA he did the Prose strand and was awarded the Curtis Brown prize. In 2005, Dunthorne traveled to Bangladesh with the British Council as part of an exchange project with young Bangladeshi writers.

His poetry has been published in magazines and featured on Channel 4 in the UK. His novel, Submarine, is forthcoming from Hamish Hamilton in early 2008.

Eating Out

There are dumpsters simply brimming
with left overs and send backs,
black sacks full of nummy slop:
coconut pannacotta
truffle honey mozzarella
California bouillabaisse
and even if you mush
the food together
I’ll bet it still tastes pretty good
but then, you see,
there are these down-by-luck
table-salt of the earth types:
smelling like asparagus piss,
no money, no grub,
little half-healed cuts on their nose bridges,
and anyhow
you’d think they might be allowed
to lick a strand of marinated pig fat
from the inside of a bin bag
but no, because the nosh,
even when it’s been tossed out,
still represents the chef
– it’s still product –
and they say a restaurant’s reputation
is only equal to its clientele
and, on occasion, these homeless chaps
shout abuse through letter boxes
so the really good restaurants
have a cage,
a big steel cage in the alley out the back,
to protect the scraps
from these poor sods
with their bellies cramping
and their sunburnt eyelids
and so, I mean,
it makes you feel terribly helpless really,
forty slightly overdone scallops
going to rot in a cage, imagine.

poem by Joe Dunthorne